j   ;'*  '*"•  *';  *\ 
.:   :>  i.-  <s  t-1 


LIBRARY 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

SANTA  BARBARA 


PRESENTED  BY 


MISS  ROSARIO  CURLETTI 


UCSB  LIBRARY 


THACKEEAY 


THE 


HUMOURIST  AND  THE  MAN  OF  LETTERS. 


A  SELECTION  FROM  HIS  CHARACTERISTIC  SPEECHES,  NOW  FOR 
THE  FIRST  TIME  GATHERED  TOGETHER. 


BY   THEODOEE    TAYLOR,   ESQ., 

Membre  d«  la  SocUtt  dee  Gens  de  Lettres. 

TO  WHICH  IS  ADDED 

IN  MEMORIAM—  BY  CHARLES  DICKENS, 

AND 

A  SKETCH,  BY  ANTHONY  TROLLOPE. 


•WITH 


NEW  YOKE : 
D.    APPLETON     AND     COMPANY, 

448  &  446  BROADWAY. 
1864. 


WILLIAM  MAKEPEACE  THACKERAY. 

A      RECENT      mOTOGKAFII      BY      ERNEST      EDWAKD8,      15.  A. 


His  RESIDENCE  IN  KENSINGTON  PALACE  GARDENS, 

Built  after  a  favourite  design  in  red  brick,  and  similar  in  style  to  Old  Kensington 
Palace  close  by,  which  was  finished  in  the  reign  of  Queen  Anne. 


MR.  THACKERAY  AND  THE  AGE  OF  QUEEN  ANNE. 

(An  imaginary  sketch  made  at  the  Garrick  Club  many  years  ago.  This  por- 
trait of  Mr.  Thackeray  as  he  used  to  appear,  12  or  15  years  since,  is  remarkable  for 
its  singular  excellence,  although  the  hair  is  represented  slightly  different  from  its 
appearance  in  later  years.) 


THE  THACKERAY  ARMS. 

(The  professional  pen  and  pencil  are  made  to  take  the  place  of  a  Falcon,  the 
proper  family  crest ;  and  the  favourite  spectacles,  so  generally  observed  In  Mr. 
Thackeray's  early  sketches,  do  service  as  the  motto.) 


CAC-SINULE     OF    M?   THACKERAY  S    HAND-WRITINQ 

IV. 


Hx.   vtxvx/x,    ajJ^jb  UK-v-C  j  v~ 

UttM    o-i    ki>Uo  U   1vi4  w-i^U-t^  a4  ie 

tvJ)      ltX,«xH^}      CLv^l    Uxt 


U-t/VU>VM     . 
-      H^    j*^t«U^l     «^      fUx^^i^ 

t<rt 


flt**t 

AA<M    « 


PKEFAOE. 


THE  following  memoir  of  the  late  ME.  THACK- 
ERAY may,  perhaps,  be  acceptable  as  filling  an  inter- 
mediate place  between  the  newspaper  or  review 
article  and  the  more  elaborate  biography  which 
may  be  expected  in  due  course.  The  writer  had 
some  peculiar  means  of  acquiring  information  for 
the  purpose  of  his  sketch,  and  to  this  he  has  added 
such  particulars  as  have  been  already  made  public  in 
English  and  foreign  publications  and  other  scattered 
sources.  The  common  complaints  against  memoirs 
of  this  necessary  haste  and  incomplete  character  will 
not  be  repeated  by  those  who  are  accustomed  to  test 
questions  in  morals  by  the  principles  which  under- 
lie them.  That  there  is  nothing  necessarily  indeli- 
cate or  improper,  in  the  desire  of  the  public  to  obtain 
some  personal  knowledge  of  the  great  and  good  who 
have  just  passed  away,  is  assumed  by  every  daily, 
weekly,  and  quarterly  journal  which  on  occasions 
of  this  kind  furnish  their  readers  with  such  details 
as  they  are  able  to  obtain,  and  which,  in  no  case,  con- 
fine themselves  strictly  to  the  public  career  of  the 
deceased. 


viii  Preface. 


Although  some  facts  in  the  private  life  of  Mr. 
Thackeray  will  be  found  to  be  touched  upon  in  these 
pages,  the  writer  is  not  conscious  of  having  written 
a  line  which  could  give  pain  to  others. 

The  writer  cannot  conclude  without  acknowl- 
edging the  kind  assistance  he  has  received  in  fur- 
nishing anecdotes  and  other  particulars  from  Mr. 
Kinglake,  the  brilliant  historian  ;  Mons.  Lacroix  ; 
Mr.  George  Cruikshank,  the  eminent  artist ;  Mr. 
Goodlake,  Lady  Bulwer  Lytton,  Mr.  Moy  Thomas, 
Mr.  Blanchard,  Mr.  George  Linley,  and  others  whose 
names  the  author  is  not  permitted  to  mention. 

T.  T.  T. 

GRAND  HOTEL  Louvois, 
Rue  Richelieu,  Paris. 
25  Jan.  1864. 


THACKERAY; 

THE 

HUMOURIST    AND    THE    MAN    OF    LETTERS. 

THE  STORY 

OF    HIS    LIFE    AND    LABOURS. 


«  CHAPTER  I. 

THACKERAY'S  ANCESTORS — DR.  THOMAS  THACKERAY,  HEAD- 
MASTER OF  HARROW — BISHOP  HOADLEY — THEODOSIA 
WOODWARD — THE  ORIGIN  OF  THE  CONNEXION  OF  THE 
THACKERAYS  WITH  INDIA — BIRTH  OF  THE  FUTURE  NOV- 
ELIST— VOYAGE  TO  ENGLAND — RECOLLECTION  OF  NA- 
POLEON AT  ST.  HELENA — THE  DEATH  OF  THE  PRINCESS 
CHARLOTTE — HADLEY — THE  CHARTERHOUSE— PARTICU- 
LARS OF  HIS  CAREER  THERE — CAMBRIDGE — CONDUCTS 
"THE  SNOB,"  A  CAMBRIDGE  FACETIOUS  MAGAZINE — 
SPECIMENS  OF  HIS  EARLY  CONTRIBUTIONS  TO  "  THE 
SNOB" — TENNYSON  AND  JOHN  MITCHELL  KEMBLE — SO- 
JOURN AT  WEIMAR — RECOLLECTIONS  OF  GOETHE — VISIT 

TO  ROME — DESTINED  FOR  THE  BAR — ART-STUDIES  IN 
PARIS — FRIENDSHIP  FOR  LOUIS  MARVY — THACKERAY'S 
CRITICISMS  ON  THE  ENGLISH  LANDSCAPE  PAINTERS. 

THE  fondness  of  Mr.  Thackeray  for  lingering 
amidst  the  scenes  of  a  boy's  daily  life  in  a  public 
grammar  school,  has  generally  been  attributed  to 

1 


2  Thackeray  /  the  Humowrist 

his  early  education  at  the  Charterhouse,  that 
celebrated  monastic-looking  establishment  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  Smithfield,  which  he  scarce- 
ly disguised  from  his  readers  as  the  original 
of  the  familiar  "  Grey  Friars  "  of  his  works  of 
fiction.  Most  of  our  novelists  have  given  us  in 
various  forms  their  school  reminiscences ;  but 
none  have  reproduced  them  so  frequently,  or 
dwelt  upon  them  with  such  manifest  bias  towards 
the  subject,  as  the  author  of  "Vanity  Fair," 
"The  Newcomes,"  and  "The  Adventures  of 
Philip."  It  is  pleasing  to  think  that  this  habit, 
which  Mr.  Thackeray  was  well  aware  had  been 
frequently  censured  by  his  critics  as  carried  to 
excess,  was,  like  his  partiality  for  the  times  of 
Queen  Anne  and  the  Georges,  in  some  degree 
due  to  the  traditional  reverence  of  his  family 
for  the  memory  of  their  great-grandfather,  Dr. 
Thomas  Thackeray,  the  well-remembered  head- 
master of  Harrow.  No  memoir  of  William 
Makepeace  Thackeray  should  begin  with  any 
other  name  than  that  of  this  excellent  man, 
who  was  in  every  sense  the  founder  of  his  family. 
If  the  evil  which  men  do  finds  its  unhappy  conse- 


an d  the  Mem  of  Jitters. 


quences  in  the  generations  that  come  after,  it  is 
no  less  true  that  the  life  T>eri&  acta,  sows  seeds  of 
good  of  which  none  can  foretell  the  final  fruit. 
It  would  not,  perhaps,  be  "  considering  too 
curiously,"  to  trace  something  of  the  success  of 
his  great  descendant  to  that  meritorious  life  of 
studious  industry  which  secured  to  the  good 
doctor's  family  the  means  of  giving  to  their 
children,  and  through  them  to  their  children's 
children,  the  benefits  of  culture  and  good  habits. 
The  memory  of  Dr.  Thomas  Thackeray  is  still 
held  in  honour  at  Harrow  among  those  of  the 
masters  who  have  most  contributed  to  raise  the 
school  to  the  high  character  it  has  long  enjoyed. 
The  Thackerays  came  originally  from  Hamps- 
thwaite,  near  Knaresborough,  in  the  West  Riding 
of  Yorkshire.  In  this  little  village  Dr.  Thomas, 
the  future  head-master  of  Harrow,  was  born.  Of 
the  position  in  life  of  the  Thackeray  family  at 
Hampsthwaite  we  are  not  able  to  give  any  account ; 
but  it  is  probable  that  they  were  of  humble  means. 
At  all  events,  Thomas  was  admitted  on  the  founda- 
tion to  Eton,  from  which  school  he  was  elected  to 
a  scholarship  at  King's  College,  Cambridge,  in 


Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist 


1711.  The  Yorkshire  lad  took  degrees  and  reaped 
honours  rapidly.  He  was  A.B.  in  1715,  and  A.M. 
in  1719.  Subsequently  he  returned  as  assistant- 
master  to  the  school  to  which  he  owed  his  early 
education,  and  was  a  candidate  for  the  provostship 
of  King's  College  in  1744,  when  Dr.  George  was 
elected.  Dr.  Thackeray,  however,  was  in  most 
things  a  fortunate  man.  In  1746  he  succeeded 
to  the  head-mastership  of  Harrow,  where  he  soon 
made  powerful  friends.  The  renown  of  the  school 
rapidly  increased  under  his  rule.  He  obtained 
several  livings,  became  Archdeacon  of  Surrey,  and 
was  appointed  chaplain  to  Frederick,  Prince  of 
Wales,  the  dull  and  despicable  father  of  George 
IH.,  whom  the  author  of  the  "  Lectures  on  the 
Four  Georges  "  sketches  with  so  strong  a  hand. 
Dr.  Edmund  Pyle,  of  Lynn,  in  a  letter  dated  1756, 
gives  some  interesting  particulars  of  the  Master  of 
Harrow's  history.  He  says :  "  Dr.  Thackeray, 
who  keeps  a  school  at  Harrow-on-the-Hill,  has 
one  living  and  fourteen  children  :  a  man  bred  at 
Eton,  and  a  great  scholar  in  the  Eton  way,  and  a 
good  one  every  way  ;  a  true  Whig,  and  proud  to 
be  so  by  some  special  marks  of  integrity.  He 


and  the  Man  of  Letters. 


was  candidate  for  the  headship  of  King's,  and 
•would  have  beat  all  men  but  George,  and  George 
too,  if  Sir  Robert  Walpole  had  not  made  George's 
promotion  a  point.  Since  this  disappointment  he 
took  the  school  at  Harrow,  to  educate  his  own  and 
other  people's  children,  where  he  has  performed 
all  along  with  great  reputation.  The  Bishop  of 
Winchester  never  saw  this  man  in  his  life,  but  had 
heard  so  much  good  of  him,  that  he  resolved  to 
serve  him  some  way  or  other  if  ever  he  could,  but 
said  nothing  to  anybody.  On  Friday  last,  he 
sent  for  this  Dr.  Thackeray,  and  when  he  came 
into  the  room  my  Lord  gave  him  a  parchment, 
and  told  liim  he  had  long  heard  of  his  good  cha- 
racter, and  long  been  afraid  he  should  never  be 
able  to  give  him  any  serviceable  proof  of  the 
good  opinion  he  had  conceived  of  him  :  that  what 
he  had  put  into  his  hands  was  the  Archdeaconry 
of  Surrey,  which  he  hoped  would  be  acceptable  to 
him,  as  he  might  perform  the  duty  of  it  yearly  at 
the  time  of  his  leisure  in  the  Easter  holidays.  Dr. 
Thackeray  was  so  surprised  and  overcome  with 
this  extraordinary  manner  of  doing  him  a  favour, 
that  he  was  very  near  fainting  as  he  was  giving 


Thackeray  /  the  Humourist 


him  institution."*  This  Bishop  was  the  cele- 
brated Hoadley,  if  we  are  not  mistaken ;  but  Mr. 
Thackeray  could  hardly  have  been  aware  of  this 
family  anecdote  when,  in  his  "  Lectures  on  the 
Four  Georges,"  he  somewhat  harshly  described 
this  unlucky  mark  for  the  controversial  pamph- 
leteers of  his  time  as  "  creeping  from  bishopric  to 
bishopric."  Dr.  Thackeray's  death  is  announced 
in  the  "  Gentleman's  Magazine "  for  October, 
1760.  His  widow  survived  him  nearly  half  a  cen- 
tury, and  died  in  January,  1797,  in  her  90th  year. 
The  Doctor  had  doubtless  courted  and  won  her  at 
Eton,  in  the  early  days  of  his  studious  life.  She 
was  Theodosia,  the  daughter  of  John  Woodward, 
Esq.,  of  that  town  and  of  Butler's  Merston,  an- 
other of  whose  daughters  married  Dr.  Nicholas 
Boscawen,  Canon  of  Windsor.  Theodosia  bore 
the  Doctor  six  sons  and  ten  daughters,  one  of 
whom,  the  Rev.  Elias  Thackeray,  was  Vice-Pro- 
vost and  Bursar  of  King's  College,  Cambridge  ; 
another  son  was  chaplain  at  St.  Petersburg ; 
another  held  an  appointment  in  the  Custom- 
house for  forty  years ;  and  two  became  Doctors 

*  Richards's  "  History  of  Lynn."    1812. 


cmd  the  Man  of  Letters. 


of   Medicine,   and    settled    at    Cambridge    and 
Windsor. 

The  marriages  of  two  of  the  daughters  seem 
to  have  laid  the  foundation  of  the  connexion  of 
the  Thackeray s  with  India.  Jane  married  Major 
Rennell  of  the  East  India  Company's  Service,  and 
Surveyor-General  of  Bengal ;  and  Henrietta, 
James  Harris,  Esq.,  of  the  East  India  Company's 
Civil  Service,  and  chief  of  Dacca.  The  grand- 
father of  the  author  of  "  Yanity  Fair  "  was  the 
youngest  son  of  this  large  family.  He  was 
christened,  for  what  reason  we  do  not  know, 
William  Makepeace ;  and  it  was  doubtless  by  the 
interest  of  his  sisters'  husbands  that  he  also  ob- 
tained an  appointment  in  the  East  India  Com- 
pany's Service.  William  Makepeace  married  a 
Miss  Webb,*  and  subsequently  retired  to  England 
with  a  competency,  leaving  behind  him  his  son, 
Richmond  Thackeray,  to  follow  the  same  career. 
Richmond  obtained  a  writership  in  1797,  and  suc- 

*  Mr.  Hannay  tells  us  that  this  lady  was  of  the  old 
English  family  to  which  the  Brigadier  "Webb  of  Marl- 
borough's  ware  belonged,  whose  portrait  is  drawn  with 
something  of  the  geniality  of  kinsmanship  in  "  Esmond." 


8  Thackeray  /  the  Humourist 

cessively  officiated  as  Judge  and  Magistrate  of 
Ranghyr,  Secretary  to  the  Board  of  Revenue  at 
Calcutta,  and  Collector  of  the  House  Tax  at  Cal- 
cutta. Here  his  son,  William  Makepeace,  the 
future  novelist,  was  born  in  1811 — the  year  be- 
fore that  which  gave  to  the  world  his  illustrious 
contemporary  and  fellow-labourer  in  the  field  of 

9 

fiction — Charles  Dickens.  Mr.  Thackeray's  father 
died  in  Calcutta  on  the  13th  of  September,  1815, 
the  very  year  of  the  battle  of  Waterloo,  the  his- 
tory of  which  is  so^  wonderfully  interwoven  with 
the  story  of  "  Vanity  Fair."  The  son,  after  re- 
maining in  India  for  some  time  with  his  widowed 
mother,  finally  bade  adieu  forever  to  that  country, 
and  was  brought  to  England  in  1817.  His  mother, 
who  had  subsequently  married  Major  Carmichael 
Smyth,  still  survives,  a  lady  of  more  than 
eighty  years  of  age,  whose  vigorous  health  and 
cheerful  spirits  are  proverbial  in  her  son's 
family. 

Sketches  of  Indian  life  and  Anglo-Indians 
generally  are  abundantly  interspersed  through 
Mr.  Thackeray's  writings,  but  he  left  India  too 
early  to  have  profited  much  by  Indian  experi- 


cmd  the  Mam,  of  Letters. 


ences.  He  is  said,  however,  to  have  retained  BO 
strong  an  impression  of  the  scene  of  his  early 
childhood,  as  to  have  long  wished  to  visit  it,  and 
recal  such  things  as  were  still  remembered  by 
him.  In  his  seventh  year  he  was  sent  to  England, 
when  the  ship  having  touched  at  St.  Helena,  he 
was  taken  up  to  have  a  glimpse  of  Bowoocl,  and 
there  saw  that  great  Captain  at  whose  name  the 
rulers  of  the  earth  had  so  often  trembled.  It  is 
remarkable  that  in  his  little  account  of  the  second 
funeral  of  Napoleon,  which  he  witnessed  in  Paris 
in  1840,  no  allusion  to  this  fact  appears ;  but  he 
himself  has  described  it  in  one  of  his  latest  works. 
u  When  I  first  saw  England,"  he  says,  "  she  was 
in  mourning  for  the  young  Princess  Charlotte,"34 
the  hope  of  the  empire.  I  came  from  India  as  a 
child,  and  our  ship  touched  at  an  island  on  our 
way  home,  where  my  black  servant  took  me  a 
long  walk  over  rocks  and  hills,  until  we  reached  a 
garden  where  we  saw  a  man  walking.  'That 
is  he ! '  cried  the  black  man ;  '  that  is  Bona- 
parte !  He  eats  three  sheep  every  day,  and  all 
the  children  he  can  lay  hands  on  1 '  With  the 

*  The  Princess  Charlotte  died  6  Nov.  1817. 
1* 


10  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist 

same  childish  attendant,"  he  adds,  "  I  remember 
peeping  through  the  colonnade  at  Carlton  House, 
and  seeing  the  abode  of  the  Prince  Regent.  I  can 
yet  see  the  guards  pacing  before  the  gates  of  the 
palace.  The  palace  !  What  palace  ?  The  palace 
exists  no  more  than  the  palace  of  Nebuchadnez- 
zar. It  is  but  a  name  now."  * 

We  fancy  that  Mr.  Thackeray  was  placed 
under  the  protection  of  his  grandfather,  William 
Makepeace  Thackeray,  who  had  settled  with  a 
good  fortune,  the  fruit  of  his  industry  in  India, 
at  Hadley,  near  Chipping  Barnet,  a  little  village 
in  the  churchyard  of  which  lies  buried  the  once- 
read  Mrs.  Chapone,  the  authoress  of  the  "  Letters 
on  the  Improvement  of  the  Mind,"  the  corre- 
spondent of  Richardson,  and  the  intimate  friend 
of  the  learned  Mrs.  Carter  and  other  blue-stocking 
ladies  of  that  time. 

In  the  course  of  time — we  believe  in  his  twelfth 
year — Mr.  Thackeray  was  sent  to  the  Charter- 
house School,  and  remained  there  as  a  boarder 
in  the  house  of  Mr.  Penny.  He  appears  in  the 
Charterhouse  records  for  the  year  1822  as  a  boy 

*  "  The  Four  Georges,"  p.  111. 


the  Man  of  Letters.  11 


on  the  tenth  form.  In  the  next  year  we  find  him 
promoted  to  the  seventh  form  ;  in  1824  to  the 
fifth  ;  and  in  1828,  when  he  had  become  a  day- 
boy, or  one  residing  with  his  friends,  we  find  him 
in  the  honourable  positions  of  a  first-form  boy  and 
one  of  the  monitors  of  the  school.  He  was,  how- 
ever, never  chosen  as  one  of  the  orators,  or  those 
who  speak  the  oration  on  the  Founder's  Day,  nor 
does  he  appear  among  the  writers  of  the  Charter- 
house odes,  which  have  been  collected  and  printed 
from  time  to  time  in  a  small  volume.  The 
school  then  enjoyed  considerable  reputation  under 
the  head-mastership  of  Dr.  Russell,  whose  death 
happened  in  the  same  year  as  that  of  his  illustrious 
pupil.  No  one  who  has  read  Mr.  Thackeray's 
novels  can  fail  to  know  the  kind  of  life  he  led 
here.  He  has  continually  described  his  expe- 
riences at  this  celebrated  school  —  the  venerable 
archway  into  which,  in  Charterhouse-square,  still 
preserves  an  interesting  token  of  the  old  monkish 
character  of  the  neighbourhood.  Only  a  fort- 
night before  his  death  he  was  there  again,  as  was 
his  custom,  on  the  anniversary  of  the  death  of 
Thomas  Button,  the  munificent  founder  of  the 


12  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist 

school.  "  He  was  there,"  says  one  who  has  de- 
scribed the  scene,  "  in  his  usual  back  seat  in  the 
quaint  old  chapel.  He  went  thence  to  the 
oration  in  the  Governor's  room ;  and  as  he 
walked  up  to  the  orator  with  his  contribution, 
was  received  with  such  hearty  applause  as  only 
Carthusians  can  give  to  one  who  has  immortalized 
their  school.  At  the  banquet  afterwards  he  sat 
at  the  side  of  his  old  friend  and  artist-associate 
in  '  Punch,'  John  Leech ;  and  in  a  humourous 
speech  proposed,  as  a  toast,  the  noble  founda- 
tion which  he  had  adorned  by  his  literary  fame, 
and  made  popular  in  his  works."  "  Divine  ser- 
vice," says  another  describer  of  the  scene,  for 
ever  memorable  as  the  last  appearance  of  Mr. 
Thackeray  in  private  life,  "  took  place  at  four 
o'clock,  in  the  quaint  old  chapel ;  and  the  appear- 
ance of  the  brethren  in  their  black  gowns,  of  the 
old  stained  glass  and  carving  in  the  chapel,  of  the 
tomb  of  Sutton,  could  hardly  fail  to  give  a 
peculiar  and  interesting  character  to  the  service. 
Prayers  were  said  by  the  Rev.  J.  J.  Halcombe, 
the  reader  of  the  house.  There  was  only  the 
usual  parochial  chanting  of  the  Nunc  Dimittis  ; 


cmd  the  Man  of  Letters.  13 

the  familiar  Commemoration-day  psalms,  122 
and  100,  were  sung  after  the  third  collect  and 
before  the  sermon  ;  and  before  the  general  thanks- 
giving the  old  prayer  was  offered  up  expressive  of 
thankfulness  to  God  for  the  bounty  of  Thomas 
Sutton,  and  of  hope  that  all  who  enjoy  it  might 
make  a  right  use  of  it.  The  sermon  was  preached 
by  the  Rev.  Henry  Earle  Tweed,  late  Fellow  of 
Oriel  College,  Oxford,  who  prefaced  it  with  the 
'  Bidding  Prayer,'  in  which  he  desired  the  con- 
gregation to  pray  generally  for  all  public  schools 
and  colleges,  and  particularly  for  the  welfare  of 
the  house  '  founded  by  Thomas  Sutton  for  the 
support  of  age  and  the  education  of  youth.' ': 

From  Charterhouse  School  Thackeray  went 
to  Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  about  1828,  the 
year  of  his  leaving  the  Charterhouse,  and 
among  his  fellow-students  there,  had  Mr.  John 
Mitchell  Kemble,  the  great  Anglo-Saxon  scholar, 
and  Mr.  Tennyson.  With  the  latter — then  un- 
known as  a  poet — he  formed  an  acquaintance 
which  he  maintained  to  the  last,  and  no  reader  of 
the  Poet-laureate  had  a  more  earnest  admiration 
of  his  productions  than  his  old  Cambridge  associate 


14  Thackeray  /  the  Humourist 

Mr.  Thackeray.  At  college,  Thackeray  kept  seven 
or  eight  terms,  but  took  no  degree ;  though  he 
was  studious,  and  his  love  of  classical  literature  is 
apparent  in  most  of  his  writings,  either  in  his 
occasional  apt  two  words  from  Horace,  or  in  the 
quaint  and  humorous  adoption  of  Latin  idioms  in 
which,  in  his  sportive  moods,  he  sometimes  in- 
dulged. A  recent  writer  tells  us  that  his  knowledge 
of  the  classics — of  Horace  at  least — was  amply 
sufficient  to  procure  him  an  honourable  place  in 
the  "  previous  examination." 

The  earliest  of  his  literary  efforts  are  asspciated 
with  Cambridge.  It  was  in  the  year  1829  that 
he  commenced,  in  conjunction  with  a  friend 
and  fellow-student,  to  edit  a  series  of  humorous 
papers,  published  in  that  city,  which  bore  the 
title  of  "  The  Snob  :  a  Literary  and  Scientific 
Journal."  The  first  number  appeared  on  the  9th 
of  April  in  that  year,  and  the  publication  was 
continued  weekly.  Though  affecting  to  be  a 
periodical,  it  was  not  originally  intended  to 
publish  more  than  one  number  ;  but  the  project 
was  carried  on  for  eleven  weeks,  in  which  period 
Mr.  Lettsom  had  resigned  the  entire  management 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  15 

to  his  friend.  The  contents  of  each  number — 
which  consisted  only  of  four  pages  of  about 
the  size  of  those  of  the  present  volume — were 
scanty  and  slight,  and  consisted  entirely  of  squibs 
and  humorous  sketches  in  verse  and  prose,  many 
of  which,  however,  show  some  germs  of  that 
spirit  of  wild  fun  which  afterwards  distinguished 
the  "  Yellowplush  "  papers  in  "  Fraser."  When 
completed,  the  papers  bore  the  following  title  : — 

THE     SNOB: 


"  CONDUCTED    By    MEMBERS   OF   THE   UNIVERSITY." 


Tityre,  tu  patula  recubans  sub  tegminefagi 
Sylvestrem.  VIROIU 


PUBLISHED  BY  W.  H.  SMITH, 

ROSE  CRESCENT. 

1829. 


16  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist 

A  few  specimens  of  the  contents  of  this  curious 
publication  cannot  but  be  interesting  to  the 
reader.  The  first  specimen  we  shall  select  is  a 
clever  skit  upon  the  Cambridge  Prize  Poem,  as 
follows : 

TIMBUCTOO. 

TO  THE  EDITOK  OF  THE   "  SNOB." 

SIB, — Though  your  name  be  "  Snob,"  I  trust  you 
will  not  refuse  this  tiny  "  Poem  of  a  Gownsman,'' 
which  was  unluckily  not  finished  on  the  day  appointed 
for  delivery  of  the  several  copies  of  verses  on  Timbuc- 
too.  I  thought,  Sir,  it  would  be  a  pity  that  such  a 
poem  should  be  lost  to  the  world ;  and  conceiving 
"  The  Snob  "  to  be  the  most  widely-circulated  periodical 
in  Europe,  I  have  taken  the  liberty  of  submitting  it  for 
insertion  or  approbation. 

I  am,  Sir,  yours,  &c.  &c.  &c. 

TIMBTJCTOO. — PAKT  I. 

The  Situation. 

In  Africa  (a  quarter  of  the  world), 
Men's  skins  are  black,  their  hair  is  crisp  and  curl'd, 

Lines  1  and  2. — See  Outline's  Geography. 

The  site  of  Timbuctoo  is  doubtful ;  the  Author  has 
neatly  expressed  this  in  the  poem,  at  the  same  time 
giving  us  some  slight  hints  relative  to  its  situation. 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  17 

And  somewhere  there,  unknown  to  public  view, 
A  mighty  city  lies,  called  Timbuctoo. 
The  natural  history. 

There  stalks  the  tiger, — there  the  lion  roars,  5 

Who  sometimes  eats  the  luckless  blackamoors ; 
All  that  he  leaves  of  them  the  monster  throws 
To  jackals,  vultures,  dogs,  cats,  kites,  and  crows ; 
His  hunger  thus  the  forest  monster  gluts, 
And  then  lies  down  'neath  trees  called  cocoa  nuts.          10 
The  lion  hunt. 

Quick  issue  out,  with  musket,  torch,  and  brand, 
The  sturdy  blackamoors,  a  dusky  band  ! 
The  beast  is  found — pop  goes  the  musketoons — 
The  lion  falls  covered  with  horrid  wounds. 

Line  5. — So  Horace :  "  leonum  arida  nutria." 
Line  8. — Thus  Apollo  : 

fXcopta  TfV^f  KVVt(T<TlV 

OKUI/OKTI  re  iratri. 

Lines  5-10. — How  skilfully  introduced  are  the  ani- 
mal and  vegetable  productions  of  Africa  I  It  is  worthy 
to  remark  the  various  garments  in  which  the  Poet  hath 
clothed  the  lion.  He  is  called,  1st,  the  "Lion;"  2nd, 
the  "  Monster "  (for  he  is  very  large) ;  and  3rd,  the 
"  Forest  Monarch,"  which  undoubtedly  he  is. 

Lines  11-14. — The  author  confessed  himself  under 
peculiar  obligations  to  Denham's  and  Clapperton's  Trav- 
els, as  they  suggested  to  him  the  spirited  description  con- 
tained in  these  lines. 

Line  18. — "  Pop   goes  the  musketoons."    A  learned 


18  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist 

Their  lives  at  home. 

At  home  their  lives  in  pleasure  always  flow,  15 

But  many  have  a  different  lot  to  know  I 

Abroad. 
They're  often  caught,  and  sold  as  slaves,  alas  I 

Reflection*  on  the  foregoing. 
Thus  men  from  highest  joys  to  sorrow  pass. 
Yet  though  thy  monarchs  and  thy  nobles  boil 
Rack  and  molasses  in  Jamaica's  isle ;  20 

Desolate  Afric  1  thou  art  lovely  yet !  1 
One  heart  yet  beats  which  ne'er  thee  shall  forget. 
What  though  thy  maidens  are  a  blackish  brown, 
Does  virtue  dwell  in  whiter  breasts  alone  ? 
Oh  no,  oh  no,  oh  no,  oh  no,  oh  no  !  25 

It  shall  not,  must  not,  cannot,  e'er  be  so. 
The  day  shall  come  when  Albion's  self  shall  feel 
Stern  Afric's  wrath,  and  writhe  'neath  Afric's  steel. 
I  see  her  tribes  the  hill  of  glory  mount, 
And  sell  their  sugars  on  their  own  account.  30 

While  round  her  throne  the  prostrate  nations  come, 
Sue  for  her  rice,  and  barter  for  her  rum  !  32 

friend  suggested  "  Bang "  as  a  stronger  expression,  but 
as  African  gunpowder  is  notoriously  bad,  the  Author 
thought  "  Pop  "  the  better  word. 

Lines  15-18. — A  concise  but  affecting  description  is 
here  given  of  the  domestic  habits  of  the  people.  The 
infamous  manner  in  which  they  are  entrapped  and  sold 
as  slaves  is  described,  and  the  whole  ends  with  an 
appropriate  moral  sentiment.  The  Poem  might  here 
finish,  but  the  spirit  of  the  bard  penetrates  the  veil  of 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  19 

Tliis  concludes  with  a  like  vignette  in  the  "  Tit- 
marsh  "  manner,  representing  an  Indian  smoking 
a  pipe  of  the  type  once  commonly  seen  in  the 

futurity,  and  from  it  cuts  off  a  bright  piece  for  the 
hitherto  unfortunate  Africans,  as  the  following  beautiful 
lines  amply  exemplify. 

It  may  perhaps  be  remarked  that  the  Author  has  here 
"  changed  his  hand."  He  answers  that  it  was  his  inten- 
tion to  do  so.  Before,  it  was  his  endeavour  to  be  ele- 
gant and  concise,  it  is  now  his  wish  to  be  enthusiastic 
and  magnificent.  He  trusts  the  Reader  will  perceive 
the  aptness  with  which  he  has  changed  his  style ;  when 
he  narrated  facts  he  was  calm,  when  he  enters  on  prophecy 
he  is  fervid. 

The  enthusiasm  which  he  feels  is  beautifully  expressed 
in  lines  25  and  26.  He  thinks  he  has  very  successfully 
imitated  in  the  last  six  lines  the  best  manner  of  Mr.  Pope ; 
and  in  lines  12-26,  the  pathetic  elegance  of  the  author  of 
"  Australasia  and  Athens." 

The  Author  cannot  conclude  without  declaring  that 
his  aim  in  writing  this  Poem  will  be  fully  accomplished, 
if  he  can  infuse  into  the  breasts  of  Englishmen  a  sense 
of  the  danger  in  which  they  lie.  Yes — Africa !  If  he 
can  awaken  one  particle  of  sympathy  for  thy  sorrows,  of 
love  for  thy  land,  of  admiration  for  thy  virtue,  he  shall 
sink  into  the  grave  with  the  proud  consciousness  that 
he  has  raised  esteem,  where  before  there  was  contempt, 
and  has  kindled  the  flame  of  hope  on  the  mouldering 
ashes  of  despair ! 


20  Thack&ray  /  the  Humourist 

shape  of  a  small  carved  image  at  the  doors  of 
tobacconists'  shops.  In  another  paper  we  find 
the  following  pretended 

ADVERTISEMENT. 

This  day  is  published,  price  3s.  6d.,  "An  Essay  on 
the  Great  Toe,"  together  with  the  nature  and  proper- 
ties of  Toes  in  general,  with  many  sagacious  inquiries 
why  the  Great  Toes  are  bigger  than  the  Little,  and 
why  the  Little  are  less  than  the  Great.  Proving  also 
that  Gout  is  not  the  Dropsy,  and  that  a  Gentleman 
may  hare  a  swelled  Face  without  a  pain  in  his  Back. 
Also  a  Postscript  to  establish  that  a  Chilblain  is  very 
unlike  a  Lock-jaw.  Translated  from  the  original 
Chaldee. 

N.B.  A  few  light  summer  lectures  on  Phrenology  to  be 
disposed  of;  enquire  of  Mr.  Smith. 

A  little  further  we  come  upon  an  exercise  in 
Malapropisms,*  under  the  form  of  a  letter  from 
Mrs. 

RAMSBOTTOM  IN  CAMBRIDGE. 

Radish  Ground  Buildings. — DEAR  SIR, — I  was  sur- 
prized to  see  my  name  in  Mr.  Bull's  paper,  for  I  give 
3^>u  my  word  I  have  not  written  a  syllabub  to  him  since 
I  came  to  reside  here,  that  I  might  enjoy  the  satiety  of  the 
literary  and  learned  world. 

*  Signed  "  Dorothea  Julia  Ramsbottom,"  after  Theodore 
Hook's  "  Paris  Correspondent." 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  21 

I  have  the  honour  of  knowing  many  extinguished 
persons.  I  am  on  terms  of  the  greatest  contumacy 
with  the  Court  of  Aldermen,  who  first  recommended 
your  weekly  dromedary  to  my  notice,  knowing  that  I 
myself  was  a  great  literati.  When  I  am  at  home,  I 
make  Lavy  read  it  to  me,  as  I  consider  you  the  censure 
of  the  anniversary,  and  a  great  upholder  of  moral  de- 
struction. 

When  I  came  here,  I  began  reading  Mechanics  (writ- 
ten by  that  gentleman  whose  name  you  whistle).  I 
thought  it  would  be  something  like  the  "Mechanics' 
Magazine,"  which  my  poor  dear  Ram  used  to  make  me 
read  to  him,  but  I  found  them  very  foolish.  What  do 
I  want  to  know  about  weights  and  measures  and  bull's 
eyes,  when  I  have  left  off  trading.  I  have,  therefore, 
begun  a  course  of  ugly  physics,  which  are  very  odd,  and 
written  by  the  Marquis  of  Spinningtoes. 

I  think  the  Library  of  Trinity  College  is  one  of  the 
most  admirable  objects  here.  I  saw  the  busks  of  several 
gentlemen  whose  statutes  I  had  seen  at  Room,  and  who 
all  received  their  edification  at  that  College.  There 
was  Aristocracy  who  wrote  farces  for  the  Olympic 
Theatre,  and  Democracy  who  was  a  laughing  philo- 
sophy. 

I  forgot  to  mention  that  my  son  George  Frederick 
is  entered  at  St.  John's,  because  I  heard  that  they  take 
most  care  of  their  morals  at  that  College.  I  called  on 
the  tutor,  who  received  myself  and  son  very  politely, 
and  said  he  had  no  doubt  my  son  would  be  a  tripod, 
and  he  hoped  perspired  higher  than  polly,  which  I  did 


22  Thackeray  /  the  Humourist 

not  like.    I  am  going  to  give  a  tea  at  my  house,  when 
I  shall  be  delighted  to  see  yourself  and  children. 
Believe  me,  dear  Sir, 

Your  most  obedient  and  affectionate, 

DOKOTHEA  JUUA  RAM8BOTTOM. 


Further  still,  we  have  an  example  of  droll 
errors  in  orthography  similar  to  those  in  which 
Thackeray  afterwards  learned  to  revel  in  the 
characters  of  "  Yellowplush,"  and  "  Jeames  of 
Buckley  Square."  This  is  entitled  :  —  • 

A  STATEMENT  OF  FAX  RELATIVE  TO  THE 
LATE  MURDER. 

By    D.    J.    RAMSBOTTOM. 


"  Come  I  to  speak  in  Caesar's  funeral." 

Milton.  Julitis  Casar,  ACT  ni. 


On  Wednesday,  the  3rd  of  June,  as  I  was  sitting  in 
my  back  parlour  taking  tea,  young  Frederick  Tudge 
entered  the  room ;  I  reserved  from  his  dislevelled  hair 
and  vegetated  appearance,  that  something  was  praying 
on  his  vittels.  When  I  heard  from  him  the  cause  of 
his  vegetation,  I  was  putrified !  I  stood  transfigured ! 
His  father,  the  editor  of  "The  Snob,"  had  been  mace- 


and  the  Mem  of  Letters.  23 


rated  in  the  most  sanguine  manner.  The  drops  of 
compassion  refused  my  eyes,  for  I  thought  of  him 
whom  I  had  lately  seen  high  in  health  and  happiness, 
that  ingenuous  indivisable,  who  often  and  often  when 
seated  alone  with  me  has  "  made  the  Table  roar,"  as 
the  poet  has  it,  and  whose  constant  aim  in  his  weakly 
dromedary,  was  to  delight  as  well  as  to  reprove.  His 
son  Frederick,  too  young  to  be  acquainted  with  the 
art  of  literal  imposition,  has  commissioned  me  to  excom- 
municate the  circumstances  of  his  death,  and  call  down 
the  anger  of  the  Proctors  and  Court  of  Aldermen  on  the 
phlogitious  perforators  of  the  deed. 

It  appears  he  was  taking  his  customary  rendezvous 
by  the  side  of  Trumpington  Ditch,  he  was  stopped  by 
some  men  in  under-gravy  dresses,  who  put  a  pitch- 
plaister  on  him,  which  completely  developed  his  nose 
and  eyes,  or,  as  Shakspeare  says,  "  his  visible  ray." 
He  was  then  dragged  into  a  field,  and  the  horrid  deed 
was  replete  1  Such  are  the  circumstances  of  his 
death;  but  Mr.  Tudge  died  like  Wriggle-us,  game  to 
the  last ;  or  like  Caesar  in  that  beautiful  faction  of  the 
poet,  with  which  I  have  headed  my '  remarks,  I  mean 
him  who  wanted  to  be  Poop  of  Room,  but  was  killed 
by  two  Brutes,  and  the  fascinating  hands  of  a  perspiring 
Senate. 

With  the  most  sanguinary  hopes  that  the  Anniver- 
sary and  Town  will  persecute  an  inquiry  into  this 
dreadful  action,  I  will  conclude  my  repeal  to  the 
pathetic  reader ;  and  if  by  such  a  misrepresentation 
of  fax,  I  have  been  enabled  to  awaken  an  apathy  for 
the  children  of  the  late  Mr.  Tudge,  who  are  left  in 


24:  Thackeray  y  the  Ifumourwt 

the  most  desultory  state,  I  shall  feel  the  satisfaction  of 
having  exorcised  my  pen  in  the  cause  of  Malevolence, 
and  soothed  the  inflictions  of  indignant  Misery. 

D.  J.  RAMSBOTTOM. 

P.  8.  The  Publisher  requests  me  to  state  that  the 
present  Number  is  published  from  the  MS.  found  in 
Mr.  Tudge's  pocket,  and  one  more  number  will  be  soon 
forthcoming,  containing  his  inhuman  papers. 

About  1831  he  repaired  to  Weimar  in  Saxony, 
where,  as  he  describes  it,  he  lived  with  a  score  of 
young  English  lads,  "  for  study,  or  sport,  or  so- 
ciety." Mr.  G.  H.  Lewes,  in  his  "  Life  of  Goethe," 
tells  us  that  Weimar  albums  still  display  with  pride 
the  caricatures  which  the  young  artist  sketched  at 
that  period.  "  My  delight  in  those  days  "  (says 
Mr.  Thackeray),  "  was  to  make  caricatures  for 
children,"  a  habit,  we  may  add,  which  he  never 
forgot.  Years .  afterwards,  in  the  fulness  of  his 
fame,  revisiting  the  "  friendly  little  Saxon  capital," 
he  found,  to  his  great  delight,  that  these  were 
yet  remembered,  and  some  even  preserved  still ; 
but  he  was  much  more  proud  to  be  told,  as  a  lad, 
that  the  great  Goethe  himself  had  looked  at  some 
of  them.  In  a  letter  to  his  friend  Mr.  Lewes,  in- 
serted by  the  latter  in  the  work  referred  to,  Mr. 


and  the  Mem  of  Letters.  25 

Thackeray  has  given  a  pleasing  picture  of  this 
period  of  his  life,  and  of  the  society  in  which  he 
fonnd  himself.  The  Grand  Duke  and  Duchess  (he 
tells  us)  received  the  English  lads  with  the  kind- 
liest hospitality.  The  court  was  splendid,  but 
yet  most  pleasant  and  homely.  They  were  in- 
vited in  turns  to  dinners,  balls,  and  assemblies 
there.  Such  young  men  as  had  a  right  appeared 
in  uniforms,  diplomatic  and  military.  Some  in- 
vented gorgeous  clothing:  the  old  Hof  Marschall, 
M.  de  Spiegel,  who  (says  Mr.  Thackeray)  had  two 
of  the  most  lovely  daughters  ever  looked  on, 
being  in  nowise  difficult  as  to  the  admission  of 
these  young  Englanders.  Of  the  winter  nights 
they  used  to  charter  sedan  chairs,  in  which  they 
were  carried  through  the  snow  to  these  court 
entertainments.  Here  young  Thackeray  had  the 
good  luck  to  purchase  Schiller's  sword,  which 
formed  a  part  of  his  court  costume,  and  which 
hung  in  his  study  till  the  day  of  his  death,  to  put 
him  (as  he  said)  in  mind  of  days  of  youth  the 
most  kindly  and  delightful. 

Here,  too,  he  had  the  advantage  of  the  society 
of  his  friend  and  fellow-student  at   Cambridge 
2 


26  Thackeray  /  the  Humourist 

Mr.  W.  G.  Lettsom,  at  present  Her  Majesty's 
Charge  d' Affaires  at  Uruguay,  but  who  was  at  the 
period  referred  to  attached  to  the  suite  of  the 
English  Minister  at  Weimar.  To  the  kindness 
of  this  gentleman  he  was  indebted  in  a  consid- 
erable degree  for  the  introductions  he  obtained 
to  the  best  families  in  the  town.  Mr.  Thackeray 
was  always  fond  of  referring  to  this  period  of 
his  life.  In  a  private  letter  written  long  after- 
wards, speaking  of  one  of  Turner's  pictures, 
he  says : — "  I  recollect,  many  years  ago,  at 
the  theatre  at  Weimar,  hearing  Beethoven's 
'  Battle  of  Vittoria,'  in  which,  amidst  a  storm  of 
glorious  music,  the  air  of '  God  save  the  King ' 
was  introduced.  The  very  instant  it  begun  every 
Englishman  in  the  theatre  stood  upright,  and  so 
stood  reverently  until  the  air  was  finished.  Why 
so?  From  some  such  thrill  of  excitement  as 
makes  us  glow  and  rejoice  over  Mr.  Turner  and 
his  '  Fighting  Temeraire.' >: 

Devrient,  who  appeared  some  years  since  at  the 
St.  James's  Theatre  in  German  versions  of  Shak- 
speare,  was  performing  at  Weimar  at  that  period ; 
and  Madame  Schroder  Devrient  was  appearing  in 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  27 

Fidelio.  In  frequenting  the  performances  at  the 
theatres,  or  attending  the  levees  of  the  Court 
ladies,  the  young  students  spent  their  evenings. 
"After  three  and  twenty  years'  absence  "  (contin- 
ues Mr.  Thackeray)  "  I  passed  a  couple  of  summer 
days  in  the  well-remembered  place,  and  was  for- 
tunate enough  to  find  some  of  the  friends  of  my 
youth.  Madame  de  Goethe  was  there,  and  re- 
ceived me  and  my  daughters  with  the  kindness 
of  old  days.  We  drank  tea  in  the  open  air  at 
the  famous  cottage  in  the  park,  which  still  be- 
longs to  the  family,  and  had  been  so  often  in- 
habited by  her  illustrious  father.  In  1831, 
though  he  had  retired  from  the  world,  Goethe 
would  nevertheless  very  kindly  receive  strangers. 
His  daughter-in-law's  tea-table  was  always  spread 
for  us.  "We  passed  hours  after  hours  there,  and 
night  after  night  with  the  pleasantest  talk  and 
music.  We  read  over  endless  novels  and  poems 
in  French,  English,  and  German.  *  *  * 
He  remained  in  his  private  apartment,  where  only 
a  very  few  privileged  persons  were  admitted ;  but 
he  liked  to  know  all  that  was  happening,  and 
interested  himself  about  all  strangers.  *  *  * 


Thackeray  /  the  Humourist 


Of  course  I  remember  very  well  the  perturba- 
tion of  spirit  with  which,  as  a  lad  of  nineteen, 
I  received  the  long-expected  intimation  that 
the  Herr  Geheimrath  would  see  me  on  such 
a  morning.  This  notable  audience  took  place  in 
a  little  ante-chamber  of  his  private  apartments, 
covered  all  round  with  antique  casts  and  bas-reliefs. 
He  was  habited  in  a  long  grey  or  drab  redingote, 
with  a  white  neckcloth  and  a  red  riband  in  his 
buttonhole.  He  kept  his  hands  behind  his  back, 
just  as  in  Ranch's  statuette.  His  complexion 
was  very  bright,  clear,  and  rosy ;  his  eyes  ex- 
traordinarily dark,  piercing,  and  brilliant.  I  felt 
quite  afraid  before  them,  and  recollect  comparing 
them  to  the  eyes  of  the  hero  of  a  certain  romance 
called  'Melmoth  the  "Wanderer,5  which  used  to 
alarm  us  boys  thirty  years  ago  ;  eyes  of  an  indi- 
vidual who  had  made  a  bargain  with  a  certain  per- 
son, and  at  an  extreme  old  age  retained  these  eyes 
in  all  their  awful  splendour.  I  fancied  Goethe 
must  have  been  still  more  handsome  as  an  old  man 
than  even  in  the  days  of  his  youth.  His  voice 
was  very  rich  and  sweet.  He  asked  me  questions 
about  myself,  which  I  answered  as  best  I  could. 


and  the  Mom  of  Letters.  29 

I  recollect  I  was  at  first  astonished,  and  then 
somewhat  relieved,  when  I  found  he  spoke  French 
with  not  a  good  accent.  Vidi  tantum.  I  saw 
him  but  three  times.  Once  walking  in  the  gar- 
den of  his  house  in  the  Frauenplan  ;  once  going  to 
step  into  his  chariot  on  a  sunshiny  day,  wearing 
a  cap,  and  a  cloak  with  a  red  collar.  He  was 
caressing  at  the  time  a  beautiful  little  golden- 
haired  granddaughter,  over  whose  sweet  fair  face 
the  earth  has  long  since  closed  too.  Many  of  us 
who  had  books  or  magazines  from  England  sent 
them  to  him,  and  he  examined  them  eagerly. 
4  Fraser's  Magazine '  had  lately  come  out,  and  I 
remember  he  was  interested  in  those  admirable 
outline  portraits  which  appeared  for  a  while  in  its 
pages.  But  there  was  one,  a  very  ghastly  carica- 
ture of  Mr.  K ,*  which,  as  Madame  de  Goethe 

told  me,  he  shut  up  and  put  away  from  him 
angrily.  '  They  would  make  me  look  like  that,' 
he  said ;  though  in  truth  I  can  fancy  nothing 
more  serene,  majestic,  and  healthy-looking  than 
the  grand  old  Goethe.  Though  his  sun  was 
setting,  the  sky  round  about  was  calm  and  bright, 

*  Samuel  Rogers,  the  poet. 


30  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist 

and  that  little  "Weimar  illumined  by  it.  In 
every  one  of  those  kind  salons  the  talk  was  still 
of  art  and  letters.  * 

At  court  the  conversation  was  exceedingly 
friendly,  simple,  and  polished.  The  Grand 
Duchess  (the  present  Grand  Duchess  Dowager), 
a  lady  of  very  remarkable  endowments,  would 
kindly  borrow  our  books  from  us,  lend  us 
her  own,  and  graciously  talk  to  us  young  men 
about  our  literary  tastes  and  pursuits.  In  the 
respect  paid  by  this  court  to  the  patriarch  of 
letters  there  was  something  ennobling,  I  think, 
alike  to  the  subject  and  sovereign.  With  a  five- 
and-twenty  years'  experience  since  those  happy 
days  of  which  I  write  (says  Mr.  Thackeray)  and 
an  acquaintance  with  an  immense  variety  of 
human  kind,  I  think  I  have  never  seen  a  society 
more  simple,  charitable,  courteous,  gentlemanlike, 
than  that  of  the  dear  little  Saxon  city  where  the 
good  Schiller  and  the  great  Goethe  lived  and  lie 
buried."  * 

The  Weimar  reminiscences  show  how  early 

*  The  whole  of  this  long  and  beautiful  letter  may  be 
read  in  Mr.  Lewes's  biography  of  "  the  Great  Goethe,"  a 
cheap  edition  of  which  has  just  been  published. 


cmd  the  Man  of  Letters.  3L 

his  passion  for  art  had  developed  itself.  One 
who  knew  him  well  affirms  that  he  was 
originally  intended  for  the  bar ;  but  he  had, 
indeed,  already  determined  to  be  an  artist,  and 
for  a  considerable  period  he  diligently  followed 
his  bent.  He  visited  Rome,  where  he  stayed  some 
time,  and  subsequently,  as  we  shall  see,  settled  for 
a  considerable  time  in  Paris,  where,  says  a  writer 
in  the  "  Edinburgh  Review  "  for  January,  1848, 
"  we  well  remember,  ten  or  twelve  years  ago, 
finding  him,  day  after  day,  engaged  in  copying 
pictures  in  the  Louvre,  in  order  to  qualify  him- 
self for  his  intended  profession.  It  may  be 
doubted,  however,"  adds  this  writer,  "  whether 
any  degree  of  assiduity  would  have  enabled  him 
to  excel  in  the  money-making  branches,  for  his 
talent  was  altogether  of  the  Hogarth  kind,  and 
was  principally  remarkable  in  the  pen-and-ink 
sketches  of  character  and  situation  which  he 
dashed  off  for  the  amusement  of  his  friends." 
This  is  just  criticism ;  but  Thackeray,  though 
caring  little  himself  for  the  graces  of  good 
drawing  or  correct  anatomy,  had  a  keen  appre- 
ciation of  the  beauties  of  his  contemporary 


32  Thackeray  /  the  jETumoivrist 

artists.  Years  after — in  1848 — when,  as  he  says, 
the  revolutionary  storm  which  raged  in  France 
"  drove  many  peaceful  artists,  as  well  as  kings, 
ministers,  tribunes,  and  socialists  of  state  for 
refuge  to  our  country,"  an  artist  friend  of  his 
early  Paris  life  found  his  way  to  Thackeray's 
home  in  London.  This  was  Monsieur  Louis 
Marvy,  in  whose  atelier  the  former  had  passed 
many  happy  hours  with  the  family  of  the  French 
artist — in  that  constant  cheerfulness  and  sun- 
shine, as  his  English  friend  expressed  it,  which 
the  Parisian  was  now  obliged  to  exchange  for  a 
dingy  parlour  and  the  fog  and  solitude  of  London. 
A  fine  and  skilful  landscape  painter  himself,  M. 
Marvy,  while  here,  as  a  means  of  earning  a  living, 
made  a  series  of  engravings  after  the  works  of  our 
English  landscape  painters.  For  some  of  these  his 
friend  obtained  for  M.  Marvy  permission  to  take 
copies  in  the  valuable  private  collection  of  Mr. 
Thomas  Baring.  The  publishers,  however,  would 
not  undertake  the  work  without  a  series  of  letter- 
press notices  of  each  picture  from  Mr.  Thackeray ; 
and  the  latter  accordingly  added  some  criticisms 
which  are  interesting  as  developing  his  theory  of 


and  the  Man  of  Jitters.  33 

* 

this  kind  of  art.  The  artists  whose  works  are  en- 
graved are  Calcott,  Turner,  Holland,  Danby,  Cres- 
wick,  Collins,  Eedgrave,  Lee,  Cattermole,  W.  J. 
Miiller,  Harding,  Nasmyth,  Wilson,  E.  "W.  Cooke, 
Constable,  De  Wint,  and  Gainsborough.  Of 
Turner  he  says  : — "  Many  cannot  comprehend  the 
pictures  themselves,  but  stand  bewildered  before 
those  blazing  wonders,  those  blood-red  shadows, 
those  whirling  gamboge  suns — awful  hierogly- 
phics, which  even  the  Oxford  undergraduate 
(Mr.  Kuskin),  Turner's  most  faithful  priest  and 
worshipper,  cannot  altogether  make  clear.  Nay, 
who  knows  whether  the  prophet  himself  has  any 
distinct  idea  of  the  words  which  break  out  from 
him  as  he  sits  whirling  on  the  tripod,  or  of  what 
spirits  will  come  up  as  he  waves  his  wand  and  de- 
livers his  astounding  incantation  ?  It  is  not  given 
to  all  to  understand ;  but  at  times  we  have  glimp- 
ses of  comprehension,  and  in  looking  at  such  pic- 
tures as  the  '  Fighting  Temeraire '  for  instance, 
or  the  <  Star  Ship,'  we  admire,  and  can  scarce 
find  words  adequate  to  express  our  wonder  at  the 
stupendous  skill  and  genius  of  this  astonishing 
master.  If  those  words  which  we  think  we  un- 
2* 


34  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist 

derstand  are  sublime,  what  are  those  others  which 
are  unintelligible  ?  Are  they  sublime  too,  or 
have  they  reached  that  next  and  higher  step 
which  by  some  is  denominated  ridiculous  !  Per- 
haps we  have  not  arrived  at  the  right  period  for 
judging,  and  Time,  which  is  proverbial  for  settling 
quarrels,  is  also  required  for  sobering  pictures." 
Of  Danby  he  says,  "His  pictures  are  always 
still.  You  stand  before  them  alone,  and  with  a 
hushed  admiration,  as  before  a  great  landscape 
when  it  breaks  on  your  view."  On  Constable's 
well-known  picture  of  the  Cornfield  in  the 
National  Gallery  he  says  :  "  The  beautiful  piece 
of  autumn  appears  to  be  under  the  influence  of  a 
late  shower.  The  shrubs,  trees,  and  distance  are 
saturated  with  it.  What  a  lover  of  water  that 
youngster  must  be  who  is  filling  himself  within 
after  he  has  been  wetted  to  the  skin  by  the  rain 
which  has  just  passed  away.  As  one  looks  at 
this  delightful  picture  one  cannot  but  admire  the 
manner  in  which  the  specific  character  of  every 
object  is  made  out :  the  undulations  of  the  ripe 
corn,  the  chequered  light  on  the  road,  the  fresh- 
ness of  the  banks,  the  trees  and  their  leafage,  the 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  35 

brilliant  cloud,  awfully  contrasting  against  the 
trees,  and  here  and  there  broken  with  azure." 
Such  were  the  opinions  of  the  author  of  the 
grotesque  illustrations  of  "  Yanity  Fair "  and 
"  Pendennis  "  upon  those  great  landscape  painters 
of  whom  England  is  proud — opinions  which  show 
at  least  a  warm  sympathy  with  that  higher  order 
of  art  in  which  he  had  failed  to  achieve  a  satis- 
factory degree  of  success. 


Facsimile  of  the  little  vignette  in  the  Cambridge  "  Snob."1 
See  above,  page  19. 


36  Thackeray  /  the  Humourist 


CHAPTEK  H. 

EARLY  CONNEXION  WITH  FRASER'S  MAGAZINE — KESIDENCE 
IN  ALBION-STREET — FONDNESS  FOR  PAHIS  LIFE — ANEC- 
DOTE OF  A  VISIT  TO  THAT  CITY  WHEN  A  BOY — THE 
QUARTIER  LATIN — KINDNESS  TO  OLD  ACQUAINTANCES 
IN  PARIS  —  ANECDOTES  OF  SUBSEQUENT  VISITS  TO 
FRANCE  —  DISLIKE  OF  FRENCH  INSTITUTIONS  —  THE 
PARADISE  OF  YOUNG  PAINTERS — HIS  ACCOUNT  OF  ART- 
STUDENT  LIFE  IN  PARIS — OPINIONS  ON  THE  FRENCH 
SCHOOL  OF  FAINTING — GROWING  LOVE  OF  AUTHORSHIP 
— PICKWICK — MACAULAY — EARLY  OPINIONS  ON  THE  OLD 
NOVELISTS — PREFERENCE  FOR  NOVELS  OVER  HISTORY — 
MAGINN  AND  "  FRASER'S  MAGAZINE" — MACLISE's  PIC- 
TURE OF  THE  FRASERIANS  IN  1834 — FATHER  PROUT — 
ORIGIN  OF  THE  YELLOWPLUSH  IDEA. 

IT  was,  we  believe,  in  1834,  and  while  residing 
fbr  a  short  period  in  Albion-street,  Hyde 
Park,  the  residence  of  his  mother  and  her  second 
husband,  Major  Carmichael  Smyth,  that  Mr. 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  37 

Thackeray  began  his  literary  career  as  a  contri- 
butor to  "  Eraser's  Magazine."  The  pseudonims 
of  "  Michael  Angelo  Titmarsh,"  "  Fitz  Boodle," 
"  Yellowplush,"  or  "  Lancelot  Wagstaff,"  under 
which  he  afterwards  amused  the  readers  of  the 
periodicals,  had  not  then  been  thought  of.  His 
early  papers  were  chiefly  relating  to  the  Fine  Arts ; 
but  most  of  them  had  some  reference  to  his  French 
experiences.  He  seems  to  have  had  a  peculiar  fan- 
cy for  Paris,  where  he  resided,  with  brief  intervals, 
for  some  years  after  coming  of  age,  and  where 
most  of  his  magazine  papers  were  written.  In 
one  of  those  delightful  essays  in  which  he  makes 
his  reader  the  confidants  of  his  personal  remi- 
niscences, he  has  given  us  an  amusing  anecdote 
of  his  first  furtive  trip  to  that  capital.  He  tells  us 
how,  when  a  lad  of  nineteen,  he  found  himself 
one  day  at  a  certain  inn  in  Dover,  whose  exorbi- 
tant charges  he  more  than  once  in  his  writings 
touches  on  for  the  benefit  of  his  readers,  and  how, 
having  paid  his  coach-fare  to  London,  the  bill  of 
that  unreasonable  hostelry  reduced  his  allowance 
so  low,  that  a  bare  half-crown  for  the  customary 
fee  to  coachman  was  all  that  remained.  It  was  in 


Thackeray  /  the  Humourist 


the  Easter  vacation  of  his  Cambridge  life,  and  he 
had  just  returned  from  Paris,  where  he  had  been 
without  leave  of  his  friends :  an  awful  sense  of 
guilt  weighed  on  his  mind.  The  possession  of  a 
spare  twenty  pounds,  and  the  wish  to  see  a  friend 
in  Paris,  had  proved  temptations  too  strong  to  be 
resisted.  But  the  worst  part  of  the  case  was  the 
fact  that  he  had  prevaricated  with  his  College 
tutor — told  him,  in  fact,  a  fib  ;  for,  having  been 
asked  by  him  where  he  intended  to  spend  his  holi- 
days, he  had  answered  with  a  friend  in  Lincoln- 
shire. Telling  this  anecdote  more  than  thirty 
years  afterwards,  he  humorously  adds  :  "  Guilt,  sir 
— guilt  always  remained  stamped  on  the  memory ; 
and  I  feel  easier  in  my  mind  now  that  it  is  libe- 
rated of  this  old  peccadillo'." 

A  recent  writer  has  given  some  amusing  parti- 
culars of  his  Paris  life,  and  his  subsequent  interest 
in  the  city,  where  he  had  many  friends  and  was 
known  to  a  wide  circle  of  readers.  "  He  lived," 
says  the  writer,  "  in  Paris  '  over  the  water,'  and 
it  is  not  long  since,  in  strolling  about  the  Latin 
Quarter  with  the  best  of  companions,  that  we  vis- 
ited his  lodgings,  Thackeray  inquiring  after  those 


(md  the  Man  of  Letters.  39 

who  were  already  forgotten — unknown.  Those 
who  may  wish  to  learn  his  early  Parisian  life  and 
associations  should  turn  to  the  story  of '  Philip  On 
his  Way  through  the  World.'  Many  incidents  in 
that  narrative  are  reminiscences  of  his  own  youth- 
ful literary  struggles  whilst  living  modestly  in 
this  city.  Latterly,  fortune  and  fame  enabled  the 
author  of '  Yanity  Fair '  to  visit  imperial  Paris  in 
imperial  style,  and  Mr.  Thackeray  put  up  gene- 
rally at  the  Hotel  de  Bristol  in  the  Place  Ven- 
dome.  Never  was  increase  of  fortune  more 
gracefully  worn  or  more  generously  employed. 
The  struggling  artist  and  small  man  of  letters 
whom  he  was  sure  to  find  at  home  or  abroad,  was 
pretty  safe  to  be  assisted  if  he  learned  their  wants. 
1  know  of  many  a  kind  act.  One  morning,  on 
entering  Mr.  Thackeray's  bedroom  in  Paris,  I 
found  him  placing  some  napoleons  in  a  pill-box, 
on  the  lid  of  which  was  written,  *  One  to  be  taken 
occasionally.'  '  What  are  you  doing  ? '  said  I. 
'  Well,'  he  replied,  '  there  is  an  old  person  here 
who  says  she  is  very  ill  and  in  distress,  and  I 
strongly  suspect  that  this  is  the  sort  of  medicine 
she  wants.  Dr.  Thackeray  intends  to  leave  it  with 


40  Thackeray  /  the  Humourist 

her  himself.  Let  us  walk  out  together.'  *  Thack- 
eray used  to  say  that  he  came  to  Paris  for  a  holi- 
day and  to  revive  his  recollections  of  French 
cooking.  But  he  generally  worked  here,  espe- 
cially when  editing  the  '  Cornhill  Magazine.' "  f 

Thackeray's  affection  for  Paris,  however,  ap- 
pears to  have  been  founded  upon  no  relish  for 
the  gaieties  of  the  French  metropolis,  and  cer- 
tainly not  upon  any  liking  for  French  institutions. 
His  papers  on  this  subject  are  generally  criticisms 
upon  political,  social,  and  literary  failings  of  the 
French,  written  in  a  severe  spirit  which  savours 
more  of  the  confident  judgment  of  youth  than  of 
the  calm  spirit  of  the  citizen  of  the  world.  The 
reactionary  rule  of  Louis  Philippe,  the  Govern- 
ment of  July,  and  the  boasted  charter  of  1830, 
were  the  objects  of  his  especial  dislike ;  nor  was 
he  less  unsparing  in  his  views  of  French  morals 
as  exemplified  in  their  law  courts,  and  in  the  nov- 
els of  such  writers  as  Madame  Dudevant.  The 
truth  is,  that  at  this  period  Paris  was,  in  the 

*  A  similar  story  has  been  told  of  Goldsmith,  which, 
however,  may  have  suggested  the  pill-box  remedy  in  the 
instance  in  the  text. 

t  Paris  Correspondent,  Morning  Post. 


and  tJie  Man  of  Letters.  41 

eyes  of  the  art  student,  simply  the  Paradise  of 
young  painters.  Possessed  of  a  good  fortune — 
said  to  have  amounted  on  his  coming  of  age  in 
1832  to  £20,000— the  young  Englishman  passed 
his  days  in  the  Louvre,  his  evenings  with  his 
French  artist  acquaintances,  of  whom  his  preface 
to  Louis  Marvy's  sketches  gives  so  pleasant  a 
glimpse ;  or  sometimes  in  his  quiet  lodgings  in 
the  Quartier  Latin,  in  dashing  off  for  some  English 
or  foreign  paper  his  enthusiastic  notices  of  the 
Paris  Exhibition,  or  a  criticism  on  French  writers, 
or  a  story  of  French  artist  life,  or  an  account  of 
some  great  cause  oelSbre  then  stirring  the  Pari- 
sian world.  This  was  doubtless  the  happiest 
period  of  his  life.  In  one  of  these  papers  he 
describes  minutely  the  life  of  the  art  student  in 
Paris,  and  records  his  impressions  of  it  at  the 
time. 

"To  account  (he  says)  for  the  superiority 
over  England — which,  I  think,  as  regards  art,  is 
incontestable — it  must  be  remembered  that  the 
painter's  trade,  in  France,  is  a  very  good  one ; 
better  appreciated,  better  understood,  and,  gene- 
rally, far  better  paid  than  with  us.  There  are 


42  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist 

a  dozen  excellent  schools  in  which  a  lad  may 
enter  here,  and,  under  the  eye  of  a  practised 
master,  learn  the  apprenticeship  of  his  art  at  an 
expense  of  about  ten  pounds  a-year.  In  England 
there  is  no  school  except  the  l  Academy,'  unless 
the  student  can  afford  to  pay  a  very  large  sum, 
and  place  himself  under  the  tuition  of  some  par- 
ticular artist.  Here  a  young  man  for  his  ten 
pounds  has  all  sorts  of  accessory  instruction, 
models,  &c. ;  and  has  further,  and  for  nothing, 
numberless  incitements  to  study  his  profession 
which  are  not  to  be  found  in  England ;  the 
streets  are  filled  with  picture-shops,  the  people 
themselves  are  pictures  walking  about ;  the 
churches,  theatres,  eating-houses,  concert-rooms, 
are  covered  with  pictures ;  Nature  itself  is  in- 
clined more  kindly  to  him,  for  the  sky  is  a 
thousand  times  more  bright  and  beautiful,  and 
the  sun  shines  for  the  greater  part  of  the  year. 
Add  to  this,  incitements  more  selfish,  but  quite 
as  powerful :  a  French  artist  is  paid  very  hand- 
somely ;  for  five  hundred  a-year  is  much  where 
all  are  poor ;  and  has  a  rank  in  society  rather 
above  his  merits  than  below  them,  being  caressed 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  43 

by  hosts  and  hostesses  in  places  where  titles  are 
laughed  at,  and  a  baron  is  thought  of  no  more 
account  than  a  banker's  clerk. 

"  The  life  of  the  young  artist  here  is  the  easiest, 
merriest,  dirtiest  existence  possible.  He  comes 
to  Paris,  probably  at  sixteen,  from  his  province  ; 
his  parents  settle  forty  pounds  a-year  on  him, 
and  pay  his  master ;  he  establishes  himself  in 
the  Pays  Latin,  or  in  the  new  quarter  Notre 
Dame  de  Lorette  (which  is  quite  peopled  with 
painters)  ;  he  arrives  at  his  atelier  at  a  tolerably 
early  hour,  and  labours  among  a  score  of  com- 
panions as  merry  and  poor  as  himself.  Each 
gentleman  has  his  favourite  tobacco-pipe,  and 
the  pictures  are  painted  in  the  midst  of  a  cloud 
of  smoke,  and  a  din  of  puns  and  choice  French 
slang,  and  a  roar  of  choruses,  of  which  no  one 
can  form  an  idea  who  has  not  been  present  at  such 
an  assembly."  In  another  paper  he  discourses 
enthusiastically  of  the  French  school  of  painting 
as  exemplified  in  a  picture  in  the  Exhibition  by 
Carel  Dujardin,  as  follows  : — 

"  A  horseman  is  riding  up  a  hill,  and  giving 
money  to  a  blowsy  beggar-wench.  O  matutini 


44  Tliack&ray  ;  the  Humourist 

rores  aurceque  salubres !  in  what  a  wonderful 
way  has  the  artist  managed  to  create  you  out  of 
a  few  bladders  of  paint  and  pots  of  varnish.  You 
can  see  the  matutinal  dews  twinkling  in  the 
grass,  and  feel  the  fresh,  salubrious  airs  ('the 
breath  of  Nature  blowing  free,'  as  the  Corn-law- 
man sings)  blowing  free  over  the  heath.  Silvery 
vapours  are  rising  up  from  the  blue  lowlands. 
You  can  tell  the  hour  of  the  morning  and  the 
time  of  the  year ;  you  can  do  anything  but  de- 
scribe it  in  words.  As  with  regard  to  the 
Poussin  above-mentioned,  one  can  never  pass  it 
without  bearing  away  a  certain  pleasing,  dream- 
ing feeling  of  awe  and  musing ;  the  other  land- 
scape inspires  the  spectator  infallibly  with  the 
most  delightful  briskness  and  cheerfulness  of 
spirit.  Herein  lies  the  vast  privilege  of  the 
landscape  painter  ;  he  does  not  address  you  with 
one  fixed  particular  subject  or  expression,  but 
with  a  thousand  never  contemplated  by  himself, 
and  which  only  arise  out  of  occasion.  You  may 
always  be  looking  at  a  natural  landscape  as  at  a 
fine  pictorial  imitation  of  one ;  it  seems  eternally 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  45 

producing  new  thoughts  in  your  bosom,  as  it 
does  fresh  beauties  from  its  own." 

It  is  certain  that  he  had  developed  a  talent 
for  writing  long  before  he  had  abandoned  his 
intention  of  becoming  a  painter,  and  that  he 
became  a  contributor  to  magazines  at  a  time 
when  there  was  at  least  no  necessity  for  his 
earning  a  livelihood  by  his  pen.  It  is  probable, 
therefore,  that  it  was  his  success  in  the 
literary  art,  rather  than  his  failure,  as  has  been 
assumed,  in  acquiring  skill  as  a  painter,  which 
gradually  drew  him  into  that  career  of  author- 
ship, the  pecuniary  profits  of  which  became  after- 
wards more  important  to  him.  Other  papers  of 
his,  written  at  this  undecided  period  of  his  life, 
contain  numerous  interesting  evidences  of  his 
growing  love  of  literature.  Of  his  contemporary 
English  writers  he  has  much  to  say.  "  Pick- 
wick," and  "  Nicholas  Nickleby,"  then  publish- 
ing, are  frequently  mentioned.  We  have  seen 
how  he  quotes  the  Corn  Law  Rhymer,  then 
but  little  known  to  the  English  public.  Speak- 
ing of  the  French  he  says,  "They  made  Tom 


4:6  Thackeray  y  the  Humowrist 

Paine  a  deputy  ;  and  as  for  Tom  Macaulay  they 
would  make  a  dynasty  of  him."  In  a  paper 
"  On  French  fashionable  Novels,"  in  an  American 
newspaper,  of  which  he  was  the  Paris  correspon- 
dent, he  thus  alludes  to  the  circulating  libraries 
of  Paris,  from  which  he  obtained  his  supply  of 
contemporary  reading : — 

"  Twopence  a  volume  bears  us  whithersoever  we 
will ;— back  to  Ivanhoe  and  Coeur  de  Lion,  or  to 
Waverley  and  the  Young  Pretender,  along  with 
Walter  Scott ;  up  to  the  heights  of  fashion  with 
the  charming  enchanters  of  the  silver-fork  school ; 
or,  better  still,  to  the  snug  inn  parlour  or  the 
jovial  tap-room,  with  Mr.  Pickwick  and  his  faith- 
ful Sancho  Weller. 

"  I  am  sure  that  a  man  who,  a  hundred 
years  hence,  should  sit  down  to  write  the  his- 
tory of  our  time,  would  do  wrong  to  put  that 
great  contemporary  history  of '  Pickwick '  aside,  as 
a  frivolous  work.  It  contains  true  character  under 
false  names ;  and,  like  '  Roderick  Random,'  an 
inferior  work,  and  '  Tom  Jones '  (one  that  is  im- 
measurably superior),  gives  us  a  better  idea  of 
the  state  and  ways  of  the  people,  than  one  could 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  47 

gather  from  any  more  pompous  or  authentic  his- 
tories." 

In  another  paper  on  Caricatures  and  Lithogra- 
phy, in  the  same  journal,  containing  a  kindly  allu- 
sion to  his  friend,  George  Cruikshank,  he  developes 
this  idea  further,  giving  us  a  still  more  interesting 
view  of  his  reading,  and  of  his  growing  preference 
for  fiction  over  other  forms  of  literature.  "  At 
the  close,"  he  says,  "  of  his  history  of  George  II., 
Smollet  condescends  to  give  a  short  chapter  on 
Literature  and  Manners.  He  speaks  of  Glover's 
'  Leonidas,'  Gibber's  '  Careless  Husband,'  the 
poems  of  Mason,  Gray,  the  two  Whiteheads,  '  the 
nervous  style,  extensive  erudition,  and  superior 
sense  of  a  Cooke  ;  the  delicate  taste,  the  polished 
inuse,  and  tender  feeling  of  a  Lyttelton.'  '  King,' 
he  says,  '  shone  unrivalled  in  Roman  eloquence, 
the  female  sex  distinguished  themselves  by  their 
taste  and  ingenuity.  Miss  Carter  rivalled  the 
celebrated  Dacier  in  learning  and  critical  know- 
ledge ;  Mrs.  Lennox  signalized  herself  by  many 
successful  efforts  of  genius,  both  in  poetry  and 
prose ;  and  Miss  Eeid  excelled  the  celebrated 
Rosalba  in  portrait  painting,  both  in  miniature 


48  TJutckeray  ;  the  Humourist 

and  at  large,  in  oil  as  well  as  in  crayons.  The 
genius  of  Cervantes  was  transferred  into  the  novels 
of  Fielding,  who  painted  the  characters  and 
ridiculed  the  follies  of  life  with  equal  strength, 
humour  and  propriety.  The  field  of  history  and 
biography  was  cultivated  by  many  writers  of 
ability,  among  whom  we  distinguish  the  copious 
Guthrie,  the  circumstantial  Ralph,  the  laborious 
Carte,  the  learned  and  elegant  Robertson,  and 
above  all,  the  ingenious,  penetrating,  and  com- 
prehensive Hume,'  &c.  &c.  We  will  quote  no 
more  of  the  passage.  Could  a  man  in  the  best 
humour  sit  down  to  write  a  graver  satire  ?  Who 
cares  for  the  tender  muse  of  Lyttelton  ?  Who 
knows  the  signal  efforts  of  Mrs.  Lennox's  genius  ? 
who  has  seen  the  admirable  performances,  in 
miniature  and  at  large,  in  oil  as  well  as  in  crayons, 
of  a  Miss  Reid  ?  Laborious  Carte,  and  circum- 
stantial Ralph,  and  copious  Guthrie,  where  are 
they,  their  works,  and  their  reputation  ?  Mrs. 
Lennox's  name  is  just  as  clean  wiped  out  of  the 
list  of  worthies  as  if  she  had  never  been  born ; 
and  Miss  Reid,  though  she  was  once  actual  flesh 
and  blood,  '  rival  in  miniature  and  at  large '  of 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  4:9 

been  at  all ;  her  little  farthing  rushlight  of  a  soul 
and  reputation  having  burnt  out,  and  left  nei- 
ther wick  nor  tallow.  Death,  too,  has  overtaken 
copious  Guthrie  and  circumstantial  Ralph.  Only 
a  few  know  whereabouts  is  the  grave  where  lies 
laborious  Carte ;  and  yet,  oh !  wondrous  power 
of  genius !  Fielding's  men  and  women  are  alive, 
though  history's  are  not.  The  progenitors  of  cir- 
cumstantial Ralph,  sent  forth,  after  much  labour 
and  pains  of  mating,  educating,  feeding,  clothing, 
a  real  man-child — a  great  palpable  mass  of  flesh, 
bones,  and  blood  (we  say  nothing  about  the  spirit), 
which  was  to  move  through  the  world,  ponderous, 
writing  histories,  and  to  die,  having  achieved  the 
title  of  circumstantial  Ralph  ;  and  lo  !  without 
any  of  the  trouble  that  the  parents  of  Ralph  had 
undergone,  alone,  perhaps,  in  a  watch  or  spung- 
ing-house,  fuddled,  most  likely,  in  the  blandest, 
easiest,  and  most  good-humoured  way  in  the 
world,  Henry  Fielding  makes  a  number  of  men 
and  women  on  so  many  sheets  of  paper,  not  only 
more  amusing  than  Ralph  or  Miss  Reid,  but  more 
like  flesh  and  blood,  and  more  alive  now  than 
they. 

3 


50  Thackeray  /  the  Huirunvrist 

"  Is  not  Amelia  preparing  her  husband's  little 
supper?  Is  not  Miss  Snap  chastely  prevent- 
ing the  crime  of  Mr.  Firebrand?  Is  not 
Parson  Adams  in  the  midst  of  his  family,  and 
Mr.  Wild  taking  his  last  bowl  of  punch  with  the 
Newgate  Ordinary  ?  Is  not  every  one  of  them 
a  real  substantial  Aa^-been  personage  now? — 
more  real  than  Reid  or  Ralph  ?  For  our  parts, 
we  will  not  take  upon  ourselves  to  say  that  they 
do  not  exist  somewhere  else  ;  that  the  actions  at- 
tributed to  them  have  not  really  taken  place ;  cer* 
tain  we  are  that  they  are  more  worthy  of  credence 
than  Ralph,  who  may  or  may  not  have  been  cir- 
cumstantial ;-— who  may  or  may  not  even  have 
existed,  a  point  unworthy  of  disputation.  As  for 
Miss  Reid,  we  will  take  an  affidavit  that  neither 
in  miniature  nor  at  large  did  she  excel  the  cele^ 
brated  Rosalba  ;  and  with  regard  to  Mrs.  Lennox, 
we  consider  her  to  be  a  mere  figment,  like  Nar- 
cissa,  Miss  Tabitha  Bramble,  or  any  hero  or 
heroine  depicted  by  the  historian  of  "  Peregrine 
Pickle.' » 

Mr,  Thackeray  had  scarcely  attained  the  age 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  51 

of  thrce-and-twenty  when  the  young  literary  art- 
student  in  Paris  was  recognised  as  an  established 
contributor  of  "  Eraser,"  worthy  to  take  a  per- 
manent place  among  that  brilliant  staff  which 
then  rendered  this  spirited  periodical  famous  both 
in  England  and  on  the  continent.  It  was  then 
under  the  editorship  of  the  celebrated  Maginn, 
one  of  the  last  of  those  compounds  of  genius  and 
profound  scholarship,  with  reckless  extravagance 
and  loose  morals,  who  once  flourished  under  the 
encouragement  of  a  tolerant  public  opinion. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  editor  and 
Greek  scholar,  who  is  always  in  difficulties,  who 
figures  in  several  of  his  works,  is  a  faithful  pic- 
ture of  this  remarkable  man  as  he  appeared  to 
his  young  contributor.  His  friend,  Mr.  Hannay, 
says : — 

"  Certain  it  is,  that  he  lent — or  in  plainer 
English — gave — five  hundred  pounds  to  poor  old 
Maginn,  when  he  was  beaten  in  the  battle  of 
life,  and  like  other  beaten  soldiers  made  a  pris- 
oner— in  the  fleet.  With  the  generation  going 
out, — that  of  Lamb  and  Coleridge, — he  had,  we 


52  Thackeray  /  the  Humourist 

believe,  no  personal  acquaintance.  Sydney  Smith 
he  met  at  a  later  time ;  and  he  remembered  with 
satisfaction  that  something  which  he  wrote  about 
Hood  gave  pleasure  to  that  delicate  humourist 
and  poet  in  his  last  days.  But  his  first  friends 
were  the  Fraserians,  of  whom  Father  Prout, — • 
always  his  intimate, — and  Carlyle, — always  one 
of  his  most  appreciating  friends, — survive.  From 
reminiscences  of  the  wilder  lights  in  the  *  Fraser ' 
constellation  were  drawn  the  pictures  of  the  queer 
fellows  connected  with  literature  in  *  Pendennis,' 
— Captain  Shandon,  the  ferocious  Bludyer, 
stout  old  Tom  Serjeant,  and  so  forth.  Maga- 
zines in  those  days  were  more  brilliant  than  they 
are  now,  when  they  are  haunted  by  the  fear  of 
shocking  the  Fogy  element  in  their  circulation ; 
and  the  effect  of  their  greater  freedom  is  seen  in 
the  buoyant,  riant,  and  unrestrained  comedy  of 
Thackeray's  own  earlier  '  Fraser '  articles.  *  I 
suppose  we  all  begin  by  being  too  savage,'  is  the 
phrase  of  a  letter  he  wrote  in  1849  ;  '  I  know  one 
who  did?  He  was  alluding  here  to  the  '  Yel- 
lowish Papers'  in  particular,  where  living  men 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  53 

were  very  freely  handled.  This  old,  wild  satiric 
spirit  it  was  which  made  him  interrupt  even  the 
early  chapters  of  '  Vanity  Fair,'  by  introducing 
a  parody,  which  he  could  not  resist,  of  some  con- 
temporary novelists."  * 

But  we  have  a  proof  of  the  fact  of  how  fully 
he  was  recognised  by  his  brother  Fraserians  as  of 
themselves  in  Maclise's  picture  of  the  Fraser 
contributors,  prefixed  to  the  number  of  "  Fraser's 
Magazine,"  for  January,  1835 — a  picture  which 
must  have  been  drawn  at  some  period  in  the 
previous  year.  This  picture  represents  a  banquet 
at  the  house  of  the  publisher,  Mr.  Fraser,  at 
which,  on  some  of  his  brief  visits  to  London, 
Thackeray  had  doubtless  been  present,  for  it  is 
easy  to  trace  in  the  juvenile  features  of  the  tall 
figure  with  the  double  eyeglass — Mr.  Thackeray 
was  throughout  life  somewhat  near-sighted — a 
portrait  of  the  future  author  of  "  Yanity  Fair." 
Mr.  Mahony,  the  well-known  "  Father  Prout "  of 
the  magazine,  in  his  account  of  the  picture 
written  in  1859,  tells  us  that  the  banquet  was 

*  Edinburgh  Evening  Courant,  Jan.  5, 1864. 


Thackeray  y  the  Humourist 


no  fiction.  In  the  chair  appeared  Dr.  Maginn 
in  the  act  of  making  a  speech ;  and  around 
him,  among  a  host  of  contributors,  including 
Bryan  Walker  Procter,  (better  known  then  as 
Barry  Cornwall),  Robert  Southey,  "William  Har- 
rison Ainsworth,  Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge,  James 
Hogg,  John  Gait,  Eraser  the  publisher,  having 
on  right,  Mr.  Lockart,  Theodore  Hook,  Sir  David 
Brewster,  Thomas  Carlyle,  Sir  Egerton  Brydges, 
Rev.  —  Grleig,  Edward  Irving,  and  others,  num- 
bering twenty-seven  in  all — of  whom,  in  1859, 
eight  only  were  living. 

This  celebrated  cartoon  of  the  Fraserians 
appears  to  place  Mr.  Thackeray's  connexion  with 
the  Magazine  before  1835  ;  but  we  have  not  suc- 
ceeded in  tracing  any  contribution  from  his  hand 
earlier  than  Nov.  1837.  Certainly,  the  after- 
wards well-used  noms  de  plume  of  Michael 
Angelo  Titmarsh,  Fitzboodle,  Charles  Yellow- 
plush,  and  Ikey  Solomons,  are  wanting  in  the 
earlier  volumes. 

It  is  in  the  number  for  the  month  and 
year  referred  to  that  we  first  find  him  con- 


and  the  Ma/n,  of  Letters.  55 

tributing  a  paper  which  is  not  reprinted  in 
his  "  Miscellanies,"  and  which  is  interesting  as 
explaining  the  origin  of  that  assumed  character 
of  a  footman  in  which  the  author  of  the  "  Yel- 
lowplush  Papers  "  and  "  Jeames's  Diary  "  after- 
wards took  delight.  A  little  volume  had  been 
published  in  1837,  entitled  "  My  Book ;  or  the 
Anatomy  of  Conduct  by  John  Henry  Skelton." 
The  writer  of  this  absurd  book  had  been  a 
woollen  draper  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Kegent- 
street.  He  had  become  possessed  of  the  fixed 
idea  that  he  was  destined  to  become  the  instruc- 
tor of  mankind  in  the  true  art  of  etiquette.  He 
gave  parties  to  the  best  company  whom  he  could 
induce  to  eat  his  dinners  and  assemble  at  his 
conversaziones,  where  his  amiable  delusion  was 
the  frequent  subject  of  the  jokes  of  his  friends. 
Skelton,  however,  felt  them  little.  He  spent 
what  fortune  he  had,  and  brought  himself  to  a 
position  in  which  his  fashionable  acquaintances 
no  longer  troubled  him  with  their  attentions ; 
but  he  did  not  cease  to  be,  in  his  own  estima- 
tion, a  model  of  deportment.  He  husbanded  his 


56  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist 

i 
small  resources,  limiting  himself  to  an  humble 

dinner  daily,  at  a  coffee-house  in  the  neighbour- 
hood of  his  old  home,  where  his  perfectly  fitting 
dress-coat — for  in  this  article  he  was  still  en- 
abled to  shine — his  brown  wig  and  dyed  whiskers, 
his  ample  white  cravat  of  the  style  of  the  Prince 
Regent's  days,  and  his  well  polished  boots,  were 
long  destined  to  raise  the  character  of  the  house 
on  which  he  bestowed  his  patronage.  In  the  days 
of  his  prosperity,  Skelton  was  understood  among 
his  acquaintances  to  be  engaged  on  a  work  which 
should  hand  down  to  posterity  the  true  code  of 
etiquette — that  body  of  unwritten  law  which 
regulated  the  society  of  the  time  of  his  favourite 
monarch.  In  the  enforced  retirement  of  his 
less  prosperous  days,  the  woollen-draper's  literary- 
design  had  time  to  develop  itself,  and  in  the  year 
1837,  "  My  Book ;  or  the  Anatomy  of  Conduct 
by  John  Henry  Skelton,"  was  finally  given  to 
the  world. . 

It  was  this  little  volume  which  fell  in  the 
way  of  Thackeray,  who  undertook  to  review 
it  for  "Fraser's  Magazine."  In  order  to  do 


and  the  Mem  of  Letters.  57 

full  justice  to  the  work,  nothing  seemed  more 
proper  than  to  present  the  reviewer  in  the  as- 
sumed character  of  a  fashionable  footman.  The 
review,  therefore,  took  the  form  of  a  letter  from 
Charles  Yellowplush,  Esq.,  containing  "  Fashion- 
able fax  and  polite  Annygoats,"  dated  from 

"No.  ,    Grosvenor    Square,    (N.B.— Hairy 

Bell),"  and  addressed  to  Oliver  Yorke,  the  well- 
known  pseudonym  of  the  Editor  of  "  Eraser." 
To  this  accident  may  be  attributed  those  extra- 
ordinary efforts  of  cicography  which  had  their 
germ  in  the  Oxford  "  Snob,"  but  which  attained 
their  full  development  in  the  Miscellanies,  the 
Ballads,  the  Snob  papers,  and  other  short 
works,  and  also  in  some  portions  even  of  the 
latest  of  the  author's  novels.  The  precepts  and 
opinions  of  "  Skelton,"  or  "  Skeleton,"  as  the 
reviewer  insisted  on  calling  the  author  of  the- 
"  Anatomy,"  were  fully  developed  and  illustrated 
by  Mr.  Yellowplush.  The  footman  who  reviewed 
the  "  fashionable  world,"  achieved  a  decided  suc- 
cess. Charles  Yellowplush  was  requested  by 
the  editor  to  extend  his  comments  upon  society 
and  books,  and  in  January,  1838,  the  "Yel- 
3* 


58  Thackeray  y  the  Humourist 

lowplush  Papers  "  were  commenced,  with  those 
peculiar  rude  illustrations  by  the  author,  which 
appear  at  first  to  have  been  suggested  by  the 
style  of  Maclise's  portraits  in  the  same  maga- 
zine, but  which  afterwards  became  habitual  to 
him. 


and  the  Man  of  Letters. 


CHAPTEE  III. 

ILLUSTRATIONS  OF  THE  PICKWICK  PAPERS — ROYAL  ACAD- 
EMY EXHIBITION — DICKENS — EXECUTIONS  IN  PARIS — 
RETURN  TO  LONDON — PARIS  LETTERS — MARRIAGE — 
YELLOWPLU8H  PAPERS — OTHER  WRITINGS — CONTRIBU- 
TIONS TO  THE  WESTMINSTER — PARIS  SKETCH  BOOK — 
SECOND  EDITION — HISTORY  OF  SAMUEL  TITMARSH — FITZ- 
BOODLE'S  CONFESSIONS — CONTRIBUTIONS  TO  MAGAZINES 
— NOTES  OF  A  JOURNEY  FROM  CORNHILL  TO  CAIRO — 

WRITINGS  FOR  PUNCH — OTHER  WORKS. 

IT  was  in  the  year  1836  that  Mr.  Thackeray, 
according  to  an  anecdote  related  by  himself, 
offered  Mr.  Dickens  to  undertake  the  task  of 
illustrating  one  of  his  works.  The  story  was  told 
by  the  former  at  an  anniversary  dinner  of  the 
Royal  Academy  a  few  years  since,  Mr.  Dickens 
being  present  on  the  occasion.  "  I  can  remember 
(said  Mr.  Thackeray)  when  Mr.  Dickens  was  a 


60  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist 

very  young  man,  and  had  commenced  delighting 
the  world  with  some  charming  humorous  works  in 
covers,  which  were  coloured  light  green,  and  came 
out  once  a  month,  that  this  young  man  wanted  an 
artist  to  illustrate  his  writings ;  and  I  recollect 
walking  up  to  his  chambers  in  Furnival's  Inn, 
with  two  or  three  drawings  in  my  hand,  which, 
strange  to  say,  he  did  not  find  suitable.  But  for 
the  unfortunate  blight  which  came  over  my  artis- 
tical  existence,  it  would  have  been  my  pride  and 
my  pleasure  to  have  endeavoured  one  day  to  find 
a  place  on  these  walls  for  one  of  iny  performances." 
The  work  referred  to  was  the  "  Pickwick  Papers," 
which  were  originally  commenced  in  April  of  that 
year,  as  the  result  of  an  agreement  with  Mr. 
Dickens  and  Mr.  Seymour,  the  comic  artist — the 
one  to  write,  and  the  other  to  illustrate,  a  book 
which  should  exhibit  the  adventures  of  cockney 
sportsmen.  As  our  readers  know,  the  descriptive 
letterpress,  by  the  author  of  the  "  Sketches  by 
Boz,"  soon  attracted  the  attention  of  the  world  ; 
while  the  clever  illustrations  by  Seymour,  which 
had  the  merit  of  creating  the  well-known  pictorial 
characteristics  of  Mr.  Pickwick  and  his  friends, 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  61 

became  regarded  only  as  illustrations  of  the  new 
humourist's  immortal  work.  Unhappily,  only 
two  or  three  monthly  numbers  had  been  com- 
pleted, when  Seymour  destroyed  himself  in  a  fit 
of  derangement.  A  new  artist  was  wanted,  and 
the  result  was  the  singular  interview  between  the 
two  men  whose  names,  though  representing  schools 
of  fiction  so  widely  different,  were  destined  to 
become  constantly  associated  in  the  public  mind. 
Mr.  Dickens  was  then  entering  into  that  great 
fame  as  a  writer  of  fiction  which  has  never  flagged 
from  that  time.  The  young  artist  had  scarcely 
attempted  literature,  and  had  still  before  him 
many  years  of  obscurity.  The  slow  growth  of  his 
fame  presents  a  curious  contrast  to  the  career  of 
his  fellow-novelist.  So  much  as  Mr.  Thackeray 
subsequently  worked  in  contributing  to  "  Fraser," 
in  co-operating  with  others  on  daily  newspapers, 
in  writing  for  "  Cruikshank's  Comic  Almanac," 
for  the  "  Times "  and  the  "  Examiner,"  for 
"  Punch,"  and  for  the  "  "Westminster  "  and  other 
Reviews,  it  could  not  be  said  that  he  was  really 
known  to  the  public  till  the  publication  of 
"  Vanity  Fair,"  when  he  had  been  an  active 


62  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist 

literary  man  for  at  least  ten  years,  and  had  at- 
tained the  age  of  thirty-seven.  The  "  Yellowplush 
Papers,"  in  "  Eraser,"  enjoyed  a  sort  of  popularity, 
and  were  at  least  widely  quoted  in  the  newspapers ; 
but  of  their  author  few  inquired.  Neither  did  the 
two  volumes  of  the  "  Paris  Sketch  Book,"  though 
presenting  many  good  specimens  of  his  peculiar 
humour,  nor  the  account  of  the  second  funeral  of 
Napoleon,  nor  even  the  "  Irish  Sketch  Book,"  do 
much  to  make  their  writer  known.  It  was  his 
"  Vanity  Fair,"  which  issued  in  shilling  monthly 
parts,  took  the  world  of  readers,  as  it  were,  by 
storm  ;  and  an  appreciative  article,  from  the  hand 
of  a  friend,  in  the  "  Edinburgh  Eeview  "  in  1848, 
which,  for  the  first  time,  helped  to  spread  the 
tidings  of  a  new  master  of  fiction  among  us,  des- 
tined to  make  a  name  second  to  none  in  English 
literature  in  its  own  field. 

A  leading  article  in  a  morning  newspaper  on 
the  occasion  of  Mr.  Thackeray's  death,  in  telling 
the  anecdote  of  his  offer  to  illustrate  "  Pickwick," 
adds,  that  disappointed  at  the  rejection  of  his  offer, 
he  exclaimed,  "  Well,  if  you  will  not  let  me  draw, 
I  will  write  ;  "  and  from  that  hour  determined  to 


and  the  Mem  of  Letters.  63 

compete  with  liis  illustrious  brother  novelist  for 
public  favour.  Nothing  could  be  more  opposed 
to  the  facts  than  this  coloured  version  of  the 
anecdote.  It  was  not  for  a  year  or  two  after  the 
event  referred  to  that  he  began  seriously  to  de- 
vote himself  to  literary  labour ;  and  his  articles, 
published  anonymously,  and  only  now  for  the  first 
time  brought  into  notice,  became  recognised  from 
their  notns  deplume,  to  have  been  written  by  him, 
contain  the  best  evidences  that  he  felt  no  shadow 
of  ill-will  for  a  rejection  which  he  always  good- 
humouredly  alluded  to  as  "  Mr.  Pickwick's  lucky 
escape."  He  was  an  early  and  sincere  admirer 
of  Mr.  Dickens's  writings.  In  the  midst  of  the 
often  savagely  sarcastic  reviews  of  literature  which 
he  contributed  to  home  and  American  magazines, 
there  are  frequent  references — generally  enthu- 
siastic ;  and  even  when  taking  exception  to  some 
feature  of  the  work,  always  respectful  to  the  great 
powers  of  the  man  whom  the  readers  of  a  subse- 
quent period  delighted  to  contrast  with  himself 
as  the  only  living  writer  of  fiction  worthy  to  be 
named  with  the  author  of  "  Yanity  Fair."  In 
the  magazine  for  February  1840,  at  the  end  of  a 


64:  Thackerwy  /  the  Humourist 

clever  satire  upon  the  "  Newgate  Calendar " 
school  of  romance,  purporting  to  be  written  by 
Ikey  Solomons,  jun.,  he  thus  remarks  upon  "  Oliver 
Twist : " — "  No  man  has  read  that  remarkable 
tale  without  being  interested  in  poor  Nancy  and 
her  murderer,and  especially  amused  and  tickled  by 
the  gambols  of  the  skilful  Dodger  and  his  com- 
panions. The  power  of  the  writer  is  so  amazing  that 
the  reader  at  once  becomes  his  captive,  and  must 
follow  him  whithersoever  he  leads  ;  and  to  what 
are  we  led  ?  Breathless  to  watch  all  the  crimes 
of  Fagin,  tenderly  to  deplore  the  errors  of  Nancy, 
to  have  for  Bill  Sikes  a  kind  of  pity  and  admira- 
tion, and  an  absolute  love  for  the  society  of  the 
Dodger.  All  these  heroes  stepped  from  the  novel 
on  to  the  stage ;  and  the  whole  London  public, 
from  peers  to  chimney-sweeps,  were  interested 
about  a  set  of  ruffians  whose  occupations  are 
thievery,  murder,  and  prostitution.  A  most 
agreeable  set  of  rascals,  indeed,  who  have  their 
virtues,  too,  but  not  good  company  for  any  man. 
We  had  better  pass  them  by  in  decent  silence ; 
for,  as  no  writer  can  or  dare  tell  the  whole  truth 
concerning  them,  and  faithfully  explain  their 


a/nd  the  Man  of  Lett&i's.  65 

vices,  there  is  no  need  to  give  ex-parte  statements 
of  their  virtues. 

The  pathos  of  the  workhouse  scenes  in  '  Oliver 
Twist,'  of  the  Fleet  Prison  descriptions  in  *  Pick- 
wick,' is  genuine  and  pure — as  much  of  this  as 
you  please ;  as  tender  a  hand  to  the  poor,  as 
kindly  a  word  to  the  unhappy,  as  you  will ;  but, 
in  the  name  of  common  sense,  let  us  not  expend 
our  sympathies  on  cutthroats,  and  other  such 
prodigies  of  evil !  " 

Still  later,  when  commenting  on  the  Royal 
Academy  Exhibition,  we  find  another  interest- 
ing reference  to  Mr.  Dickens,  with  a  prophecy 
of  his  future  greatness : — "  Look,  (lie  says 
in  the  assumed  character  of  Michael  Angelo 
Titmarsh),  at  the  portrait  of  Mr.  Dickens, — well 
arranged  as  a  picture,  good  in  colour,  and  light 
and  shadow,  and  as  a  likeness  perfectly  amazing  ; 
a  looking-glass  could  not  render  a  better  facsimile. 
Here  we  have  the  real  identical  man  Dickens : 
the  artist  must  have  understood  the  inward  Boz 
as  well  as  the  outward  before  he  made  this  ad- 
mirable representation  of  him.  What  cheerful 
intelligence  there  is  about  the  man's  eyes  and 


66  Thackeray  /  the  Humourist 

large  forehead !  The  mouth  is  too  large  and 
full,  too  eager  and  active,  perhaps  ;  the  smile  is 
very  sweet  and  generous.  If  Monsieur  de  Balzac, 
that  voluminous  physiognomist,  could  examine 
this  head,  he  would,  no  doubt,  interpret  every  tone 
and  wrinkle  in  it :  the  nose  firm,  and  well  placed ; 
the  nostrils  wide  and  full,  as  are  the  nostrils  of 
all  men  of  genius  (this  is  Monsieur  Balzac's 
maxim).  The  past  and  the  future,  says  Jean 
Paul,  are  written  in  every  countenance.  I  think 
we  may  promise  ourselves  a  brilliant  future  from 
this  one.  There  seems  no  flagging  as  yet  in  it, 
no  sense  of  fatigue,  or  consciousness  of  decaying 
power.  Long  mayest  thou,  O  Boz !  reign  over 
thy  comic  kingdom ;  long  may  we  pay  tribute, 
whether  of  threepence  weekly  or  of  a  shilling 
monthly,  it  matters  not.  Mighty . prince  !  at  thy 
imperial  feet,  Titmarsh,  humblest  of  thy  servants, 
offers  his  vows  of  loyalty  and  his  humble  tribute 
of  praise." 

But  a  still  more  touching  and  beautiful  tribute 
to  Mr.  Dickens's  genius  from  the  yet  unknown 
Michael  Angelo  Titmarsh  appears  in  "  Fraser  "  for 
July  18M.  A  box  of  Christmas  books  is  sup- 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  67 

posed  to  have  been  sent  by  the  editor  to  Titmarsh 
in  his  retirement  in  Switzerland,  whence  the  latter 
writes  his  notions  of  their  contents.  The  last  book 
of  all  is  Mr.  Dickens's  Christmas  Carol — we 
mean  the  story  of  old  Scrooge — the  immortal  pre- 
cursor of  that  long  line  of  Christmas  stories  which 
are  now  so  familiar  to  his  readers. 

"  And  now  (says  the  critic)  there  is  but  one 
book  left  in  the  box,  the  smallest  one,  but  oh  ! 
how  much  the  best  of  all.  It  is  the  work  of  the 
master  of  all  the  English  humourists  now  alive  ; 
the  young  man  who  came  and  took  his  place 
calmly  at  the  head  of  the  whole  tribe,  and  who 
has  kept  it.  Think  of  all  we  owe  Mr.  Dickens 
since  those  half  dozen  years,  that  store  of  happy 
hours  that  he  has  made  us  pass,  the  kindly 
and  pleasant  companions  whom  he  has  introduced 
to  us ;  the  harmless  laughter,  the  generous  wit, 
the  frank,  manly,  human  love  which  he  has  taught 
us  to  feel !  Every  month  of  those  years  has 
brought  us  some  kind  token  from  this  delightful 
genius.  His  books  may  have  lost  in  art,  perhaps, 
but  could  we  afford  to  wait?  Since  the  days 
when  the  '  Spectator '  was  produced  by  a  man  of 


Thackeray  y  the  Humourist 


kindred  mind  and  temper,  what  books  have  ap- 
peared that  have  taken  so  affectionate  a  hold  of 

the  English  public  as  these  ? 

***** 

Who  can  listen  to  objections  regarding  such  a 
book  as  this  ?  It  seems  to  me  a  national  benefit, 
and  to  every  man  or  woman  who  reads  it  a  per- 
sonal kindness.  The  last  two  people  I  heard 
speak  of  it  were  women  ;  neither  knew  the  other, 
or  the  author,  and  both  said,  by  way  of  criticism, 
<  God  bless  him !'  *  *  *  *  * 
As  for  TINY  TIM,  there  is  a  certain  passage  in  the 
book  regarding  that  young  gentleman,  about 
which  a  man  should  hardly  venture  to  speak  in 
print  or  in  public,  any  more  than  he  would  of  any 
other  affections  of  his  private  heart.  There  is 
not  a  reader  in  England  but  that  little  creature 
will  be  a  bond  of  union  between  author  and  him ; 
and  he  will  say  of  Charles  Dickens,  as  the  woman 
just  now,  '  God  bless  him  ! '  What  a  feeling  is 
this  for  a  writer  to  be  able  to  inspire,  and  what  a 
reward  to  reap." 

Mr.  Thackeray  was  in  Paris  in  March,  1836, 
at  the   time  of   the  execution   of    Fieschi  and 


cmd  the  Man  of  Letters.  69 

Lacenaire,  upon  which  subject  he  wrote  some 
remarks  in  one  of  his  anonymous  papers,  which  it 
is  interesting  to  compare  with  the  more  advanced 
views  in  favour  of  the  abolition  of  the  punishment 
of  death,  which  are  familiar  to  the  readers  of  his 
subsequent  article,  "  On  going  to  see  a  Man 
Hanged."  He  did  not  witness  the  execution 
either  of  Fieschi  or  Lacenaire,  though  he  made 
unsuccessful  attempts  to  be  present  at  both 
cases. 

"  The  day  for  Fieschi's  death  was,  purposely, 
kept  secret ;  and  he  was  executed  at  a  remote 
quarter  of  the  town."  But  the  scene  on  the 
morning  when  his  execution  did  not  take  place 
was  never  forgotten  by  the  young  English 
artist. 

It  was  carnival  time,  and  the  rumour  had  pretty 
generally  been  carried  abroad,  that  the  culprit 
was  to  die  on  that  morning.  A  friend,  who  ac- 
companied Thackeray,  came  many  miles,  through 
the  mud  and  dark,  in  order  to  be  "  in  at  the  death." 
They  set  out  before  light,  floundering  through  the 
muddy  Champs  Elysees,  where  were  many  others- 
bent  upon  the  same  errand.  They  passed  by  the 


70  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist 

Concert  of  Musard,  then  held  in  the  Rue  St. 
Honore  ;  and  round  this,  in  the  wet,  a  number  of 
coaches  were  collected  ;  the  ball  was  just  up  ;  and 
a  crowd  of  people,  in  hideous  masquerade,  drunk, 
tired,  dirty,  dressed  in  horrible  old  frippery, 
and  daubed  with  filthy  rouge,  were  trooping  out 
of  the  place ;  tipsy  women  and  men,  shrieking, 
jabbering,  gesticulating,  as  French  will  do ;  parties 
swaggering,  staggering  forwards,  arm  in  arm, 
reeling  to  and  fro  across  the  street,  and  yelling 
songs  in  chorus.  Hundreds  of  these  were  bound 
for  the  show,  and  the  two  friends  thought  them- 
selves lucky  in  finding  a  vehicle  to  the  execution 
place,  at  the  Barriere  d'Enfer.  As  they  crossed 
the  river,  and  entered  the  Rue  d'Enfer,  crowds  of 
students,  black  workmen,  and  more  drunken  devils, 
from  more  carnival  balls,  were  filling  it ;  and  on 
the  grand  place  there  were  thousands  of  these 
assembled,  looking  out  for  Fieschi  and  his  cortege. 
They  waited,  but  no  throat-cutting  that  morning ; 
no  august  spectacle  of  satisfied  justice ;  and  the 
eager  spectators  were  obliged  to  return,  disap- 
pointed of  their  expected  breakfast  of  blood.  "  It 
would  "  (says  Thackeray)  "  have  been  a  fine  scene, 


a/nd  the  Man  of  Letters.  71 

that  execution,  could  it  but  have  taken  place  in 
the  midst  of  the  mad  mountebanks  and  tipsy 
strumpets,  who  had  flocked  so  far  to  witness  it, 
wishing  to  wind  up  the  delights  of  then-  carnival 
by  a  lonne-bouche  of  a  murder." 

The  other  attempt  was  equally  unfortunate. 
The  same  friend  accompanied  him  ;  'but  they  ar- 
rived too  late  on  the  ground  to  be  present  at  the 
execution  of  Lacenaire  and  his  co-mate  in  murder, 
Avril.  But  as  they  came  to  the  spot  (a  gloomy 
round  space,  within  the  barrier — three  roads  led 
to  it — and,  outside,  they  saw  the  wine-shops  and 
restaurateurs  of  the  barrier  looking  gay  and 
inviting),  they  only  found,  in  the  midst  of  it,  a 
little  pool  of  ice,  just  partially  tinged  with  red. 
Two  or  three  idle  street  boys  were  dancing  and 
stamping  about  this  pool ;  and  when  the  English- 
men asked  one  of  them  whether  the  execution  had 
taken  place,  he  began  dancing  more  madly  than 
ever,  and  shrieked  out  with  a  loud  fantastic 
theatrical  voice,  "  Venez  tous  Messieurs  et  Dames, 
voyez  ici  le  sang  du  manstre,  Lacenaire,  et  de  son 
compagnon,  le  traitre  Avril ;  "  and,  straightway, 
all  the  other  gamins  screamed  out  the  words  in 


72  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist 

chorus,  and  took  hands  and  danced  round  the 
little  puddle.  "  Oh,  august  Justice  !  "  exclaimed 
the  young  art-student,  "  your  meal  was  followed 
by  a  pretty  appropriate  grace !  Was  any  man 
who  saw  the  show  deterred,  or  frightened,  or 
moralized  in  any  way?  He  had  gratified  his 
appetite  for  blood,  and  this  was  all.  Remark 
what  a  good  breakfast  you  eat  after  an  execution ; 
how  pleasant  it  is  to  cut  jokes  after  it,  and  upon 
it.  This  merry,  pleasant  mood,  is  brought  on  by 
the  blood-tonic." 

Mr.  Thackeray  returned  to  London  in  March, 
1836,  and  resided  for  a  few  months  in  the  house 
of  his  stepfather,  Major  Henry  Carmichael  Smyth. 
The  principal  object  of  his  return  was  to  concert 
with  Major  Smyth,  who  was  a  gentleman  of  some 
literary  attainments,  a  project  for  starting  a  daily 
•  newspaper.  The  time  was  believed  to  be  re- 
markably opportune  for  the  new  journal ;  the  old 
oppressive  newspaper  stamp  being  about  to  be 
repealed,  and  a  penny  stamp,  giving  the  privilege 
of  a  free  transition  through  the  post,  about 
to  be  substituted.  The  project  was  to  form  a 
small  joint-stock  company,  to  be  called  the 


and  the  Mem  of  Letters.  73 

Metropolitan  Newspaper  Company,  with  a  capital 
of  60,000?.,  in  shares  of  10Z.  each.  The  Major, 
as  chief  proprietor,  became  chairman  of  the  new 
company ;  Laman  Blanchard  was  appointed 
editor,  Douglas  Jerrold  a  dramatic  critic,  and 
Thackeray  the  Paris  correspondent.  An  old  and 
respectable,  though  decayed  journal,  entitled  the 
Public  Ledger,  was  purchased  by  the  company  ; 
and  on  the  15th  of  September,  the  first  day  of 
the  new  stamp  duty,  the  newspaper  was  started, 
with  the  title  of  the  Constitutional  and  Public 
Ledger.  The  politics  of  the  paper  were  ultra- 
liberal.  Its  programme  was  entire  freedom  of 
the  press,  extension  of  popular  suffrage,  vote  by 
ballot,  shortening  of  duration  of  parliaments, 
equality  of  civil  rights  and  religious  liberty,  &c. 
A  number  of  the  most  eminent  of  the  advanced 
party,  including  Mr.  Grote,  Sir  William  Moles- 
worth,  Mr.  Joseph  Hume,  and  Colonel  Thompson, 
publicly  advertised  their  intention  to  support  the 
new  journal,  and  to  promote  its  circulation.  Mr. 
Thackeray's  Paris  letters,  signed  "  S.  T.,"  com- 
menced on  the  24th  of  September,  and  were  con- 
tinued at  intervals  until  the  Spring  of  the  follow- 
4 


74  Thackera/y  /  the  Humourist 

ing  year :  they  present  little  worth  notice.  At 
that  time  the  chatty  correspondent,  who  discourses 
upon  all  things  save  the  subject  of  his  letter,  was  a 
thing  unknown.  Bare  facts,  such  as  the  telegraph- 
wires  now  bring  us,  with  here  and  there  a  soupqon 
of  philosophical  reflection,  was  the  utmost  that  the 
readers  of  newspapers  in  those  days  demanded 
of  the  useful  individual  who  kept  watch  in  the 
capital  of  civilization  for  events  of  interest.  Gene- 
rally, however,  the  letters  are  characterized  by  a 
strong  distaste  for  the  Government  of  July,  and 
by  an  ardent  liberalism  which  had  but  slightly 
cooled  down  when,  at  the  Oxford  election  in 
1857,  he  declared  himself  an  uncompromising 
advocate  of  vote  by  ballot.  Writing  from  Paris 
on  October  8,  he  says : — "  We  are  luckily  too 
strong  to  dread  much  from  open  hostility,  or  to 
be  bullied  back  into  toryism  by  our  neighbours  ; 
but  if  radicalism  be  a  sin  in  their  eyes,  it  exists, 
thank  God !  not  merely  across  the  Alps,  but 
across  the  channel."  The  new  journal,  however, 
was  far  from  prosperous.  After  enlarging  its  size 
and  raising  its  price  from  fourpence-halfpenny  to 
fivepence,  it  gradually  declined  in  circulation. 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  75 

The  last  number  appeared  on  the  1st  of  July, 
1837,  bearing  black  borders  for  the  death  of  the 
king.  "  We  can  estimate,  therefore  (says  the  dy- 
ing speech  of  the  Constitutional),  the  feelings  of  the 
gentleman  who  once  walked  at  his  own  funeral," 
and  the  editor,  or  perhaps  his  late  Paris  Corre- 
spondent adds,  "  The  adverse  circumstances  have 
been  various.  In  the  philosophy  of  ill-luck  it  may 
be  laid  down  as  a  principle  that  every  point 
of  discouragement  tends  to  one  common  centre 
of  defeat.  When  the  fates  do  concur  in  one  dis- 
comfiture their  unanimity  is  wonderful.  So  has 
it  happened  in  the  case  of  the  Constitutional.  In 
the  first  place,  a  delay  of  some  months  conse- 
quent upon  the  postponement  of  the  newspaper 
stamp  reduction,  operated  on  the  minds  of  many 
who  were  originally  parties  to  the  enterprise ;  in 
the  next,  the  majority  of  those  who  remained 
faithful  were  wholly  inexperienced  in  the  art  and 
mystery  of  the  practical  working  of  an  important 
daily  journal ;  in  the  third,  and  consequent  upon 
the  other  two,  there  was  the  want  of  those  abun- 
dant means,  and  of  that  wise  application  of  re- 
sources, without  which  no  efficient  organ  of  the 


76  TItackeray  /  the  Humourist 

interests  of  any  class  of  men — to  say  nothing  of 
the  interests  of  that  first  and  greatest  class  whose 
welfare  has  been  our  dearest  aim,  and  most  con- 
stant object — can  be  successfully  established. 
Then  came  further  misgivings  on  the  part  of 
friends,  and  the  delusive  undertakings  of  friends 
in  disguise."  The  venture  proved  in  every  way 
a  disastrous  one.  Although  nominally  supported 
by  a  joint-stock  company,  the  burden  of  the  un- 
dertaking really  rested  upon  the  original  promo- 
ters, of  whom  Major  Smyth  "was  the  principal, 
while  his  stepson,  Mr.  Thackeray,  also  lost  nearly 
all  that  remained  of  his  fortune. 

It  was  shortly  after  the  failure  of  the  Consti- 
tutional that  Mr.  Thackeray  married  in  Paris  a 
Miss  Shaw,  sister  of  the  Captain  Shaw,  an  Indian 
officer,  who  was  one  of  the  mourners  at  his  fune- 
ral, an  Irish  lady  of  good  family,  who  bore  him 
two  daughters,  the  elder  of  whom  has  recently 
shown  something  of  her  illustrious  father's  talent, 
in  the  remarkable  story  of  "  Elizabeth,"  written 
by  her,  and  published  in  the  "  Cornhill  Maga- 
zine." In  1837  he  left  that  city  with  his  family, 
and  resided  for  two  years  in  London,  when  for  the 


and  the  Mem  of  Letters.  77 


first  time  he  began  to  devote  himself  seriously  to 
literary  labour,  adding,  according  to  a  French 
writer,  occasional  work  as  an  illustrator.  We  are 
told  that  he  contributed  some  papers  to  the  Times 
during  Barnes's  editorship — an  article  on  "  Field- 
ing "  among  them.  He  is  believed  to  have  been 
connected  with  two  literary  papers  of  his  time — 
the  Torch,  edited  by  Felix  Fax,  Esq.,  and  the 
Parthenon,  which  must  not  be  confounded  with 
a  literary  journal  with  the  same  name  recently 
existing.  The  Torch,  which  was  started  on  the 
26th  of  August,  1837,  ran  only  for  six  months ; 
and  was  immediately  succeeded  by  the  Parthenon, 
which  had  a  longer  existence.  In  neither  paper, 
however,  is  it  possible  to  trace  any  sign  of  that 
shrewd  criticism  or  overflowing  humour  which 
distinguish  the  papers  in  "  Fraser."  For  the  latter 
publication  he  laboured  assiduously,  and  it  was 
at  this  time  that  the  "  Yellowplush  Papers  "  ap- 
peared, with  occasional  notices  of  the  Exhibitions 
of  Paintings  in  London.  Among  his  writings  of 
this  period  (1837-1840),  we  also  find  "  Stubb's 
Calendar,  or  the  Fatal  Boots,"  contributed  to  his 
friend  Cmikshank's  "  Comic  Almanac  "  for  1839, 


78  Thackerwy  /  tJie  Humourist 

and  since  included  in  the  "  Miscellanies ; "  "  Cathe- 
rine, by  Ikey  Solomons,  jun.,"  a  long  continuous 
story,  founded  on  the  crime  of  Catherine  Hays, 
the  celebrated  murderess  of  the  last  century,  and 
intended  to  ridicule  the  novels  of  the  school  of 
Jack  Sheppard ;  "  Cartouche  "  and  "  Painsonnet," 
two  stories,  and  "  Epistles  to  the  Liberator."  In 
1839  he  visited  Paris  again  at  the  request  of  the 
proprietor  of  "  Fraser,"  in  order  to  write  an  ac- 
count of  the  French  Exhibition  of  Paintings, 
which  appears  in  the  December  number. 

On  his  return  he  devoted  himself  to  the  writing 
of  "  The  Shabby  Genteel "  story,  which  was  begun 
in  "  Fraser "  for  June,  and  continued  in  the 
numbers  for  July,  August,  and  October,  when  it 
stopped  unfinished  at  the  ninth  chapter.  The 
story  of  this  strange  failure  is  a  mournful  one. 
While  busily  engaged  in  writing  this  beautiful 
and  affecting  story,  a  dark  shadow  descended  upon 
his  household,  making  all  the  associations  of  that 
time  painful  to  him  forever.  The  terrible  truth, 
long  suspected,  that  the  chosen  partner  of  his  good 
and  evil  fortunes  could  never  participate  in  the 
*  success  for  which  he  had  toiled,  became  confirmed. 


and  ike  Mem  of  Letters.  79 

The  mental  disease  which  had  attackec^  his  wife 
rapidly  developed  itself,  until  the  hopes  which  had 
sustained  those  to  whom  she  was  most  dear  were 
wholly  extinguished.  Mr.  Thackeray  was  not  one 
of  those  who  love  to  parade  their  domestic  sorrows 
before  the  world.  No  explanation  of  his  strange 
failure  to  complete  his  story  was  given  to  his 
readers  ;  but,  years  afterwards,  in  reprinting  it  in 
his  miscellanies,  he  alluded  to  the  circumstances 
which  had  paralyzed  his  hand,  and  rendered  him 
incapable  of  ever  resuming  the  thread  of. his  story, 
with  a  touching  suggestiveness  for  those  who  knew 
the  facts.  The  tale  was  interrupted,  he  said,  "  at 
a  sad  period  of  the  writer's  own  life."  When  the 
republication  of  the  miscellanies  was  announced, 
it  was  his  intention  to  complete  the  little  story — 
but  the  colours  were  long  since  dry — the  artist's 
hand  had  changed.  It  "  was  best,"  he  says,  "  to 
leave  the  sketch  as  it  was  when  first  resigned 
seventeen  years  ago.  The  memory  of  the  past  is 
renewed  as  he  looks  at  it."* 

It  was  in  1840  that  Mr.  Thackeray  contributed 
to  the  ""Westminster"  a  beautiful  and  appreciative 

*  Miscellanies,"  vol.  iv.  p.  324. 


80  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist 

article  upon  the  productions  of  his  friend,  George 
Cruikshank,  illustrated — an  tumsual  thing  for  the 
great  organ  of  the  philosophers  of  the  schools  of 
Bentham,  J.  Mill,  and  Sir  W.  Molesworth — with 
numerous  specimens  of  the  comic  sketches  of  the 
subject  of  the  papers.  His  defence  of  Cruikshank 
from  the  cavils  of  those  who  loved  to  dwell  upon 
his  defects  as  a  draughtsman  is  full  of  sound  criti- 
cism ;  his  claim  for  his  friend  as  something  far 
greater,  a  man  endowed  with  that  rarest  of  all 
faculties,  the  power  to  create,  are  inspired  by  a 
generous  enthusiasm  which  give  a  life  and  spirit 
to  the  paper  not  often  found  in  a  critical  review. 
But  perhaps  the  finest  passage  in  the  article  is 
the  concluding  words  : — "  Many  artists,  we  hear, 
hold  his  works  rather  cheap ;  they  prate  about 
bad  drawing,  want  of  scientific  knowledge — they 
would  have  something  vastly  more  neat,  regular, 
anatomical.  Not  one  of  the  whole  band,  most 
likely,  but  can  paint  an  academy  figure  better  than 
himself — nay,  or  a  portrait  of  an  alderman's  lady 
and  family  of  children.  But  look  down  the  list  of 
the  painters,  and  tell  us  who  are  they  ?  How  many 
among  these  men  are  poets,  makers,  possessing 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  81 

the  faculty  to  create,  the  greatest  among  the  gifts 
with  which  Providence  has  endowed  the  mind  of 
man  ?  Say  how  many  there  are  ?  Count  up  what 
they  have  done,  and  see  what,  in  the  course  of 
some  nine  and  twenty  years,  has  been  done  by 
this  indefatigable  man.  What  amazing  energetic 
fecundity  do  we  find  in  him  !  As  a  boy,  he  began 
to  fight  for  bread,  has  been  hungry  (twice  a  day, 
we  trust)  ever  since,  and  has  been  obliged  to  sell 
his  wit  for  his  bread  week  by  week.  And  his  wit, 
sterling  gold  as  it  is,  will  find  no  such  purchasers 
as  the  fashionable  painter's  thin  pinchbeck,  who 
can  live  comfortably  for  six  weeks,  when  paid  for 
and  painting  a  portrait,  and  fancies  his  mind  pro- 
digiously occupied  all  the  while.  There  was  an 
artist  in  Paris — an  artist  hairdresser — who  used  to 
be  fatigued  and  take  restoratives  after  inventing 
a  new  coiffure.  By  no  such  gentle  operation  of 
head-dressing  has  Cruikshank  lived ;  time  was  (we 
are  told  so  in  print)  when  for  a  picture  with  thirty 
heads  in  it,  he  was  paid  three  guineas — a  poor 
week's  pittance  truly,  and  a  dire  week's  labour. 
We  make  no  doubt  that  the  same  labour  would  at 
present  bring  him  twenty  times  the  sum ;  but 
4* 


82  Thackeray  /  the  Humourist 

whether  it  be  ill-paid  or  well,  what  labour  has  Mr. 
Cruikshank's  been !  Week  by  week,  for  thirty 
years,  to  produce  something  new ;  some  smiling 
offspring  of  painful  labour,  quite  independent  and 
distinct  from  its  ten  thousand  jovial  brethren  ;  in 
what  hours  of  sorrow  and  ill-health  to  be  told  by 
the  world,  '  Make  us  laugh,  or  you  starve — give 
us  fresh  fun  ;  we  have  eaten  up  the  old,  and  are 
hungry.'  And  all  this  has  he  been  obliged  to  do 
— to  wring  laughter  day  by  day,  sometimes, 
perhaps,  out  of  want,  often,  certainly,  from  ill- 
health  and  depression — to  keep  the  fire  of  his 
brain  perpetually  alight,  for  the  greedy  public  will 
give  it  no  leisure  to  cool.  This  he  has  done,  and 
done  well.  He  has  told  a  thousand  new  truths 
in  as  many  strange  and  fascinating  ways  ;  he  has 
given  a  thousand  new  and  pleasant  thoughts  to 
millions  of  people  ;  he  has  never  used  his  wit  dis- 
honestly ;  he  has  never,  in  all  the  exuberance  of 
his  frolicsome  nature,  caused  a  single  painful  or 
guilty  blush.  How  little  do  we  think  of  the 
extraordinary  power  of  this  man,  and  how  ungrate- 
ful are  we  to  him ! "  This  long  paper,  signed 
with  the  Greek  letter  Theta,  is  little  known  ;  but 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  83 

Mr.  Thackeray  frequently  referred  to  it  as  a 
labour  in  which  he  had  felt  a  peculiar  pleasure. 

In  a  private  letter  to  a  literary  friend,  written 
in  1850,  he  says: — Don't  forget  the  copy  of 
C's  Almanack.  There  is  one  print  of  a  wedding 
party,  which,  if  it  amuses  you  as  it  has  amused 
me,  will  be  worth  the  price  and  carriage.  "When 
you  get  it,  note  the  gruff  old  gentleman  on  the 
right,  who  has  screwed  up  his  face  with  a  firm 
resolve  that  he  will  not  shed  tears  with  the  rest 
of  the  company.  I  fancy  that  he  is  a  monied 
man,  and  that  there  have  been  family  '  expecta- 
tions'  from  him.  Something  seems  wanting 
about  his  head.  Can  it  be  a  pen  behind  the  ear  ? 
And  now  I  think  of  it,  those  features  have  a  bill- 
discounting  expression,  and  he  has  been  accus- 
tomed to  say  '  no  ;  couldn't  entertain  it ! '  "  * 

In  the  summer  of  1840  he  collected  some  of 
his  sketches  inserted  in  "  Fraser,"  and  other  pe- 
riodicals, English  and  foreign,  and  republished 
them  under  the  title  of  "  The  Paris  Sketch  Book." 
This  work  is  interesting  as  the  first  indepen- 

*  The  author  has  been  fortunate  in  obtaining  permis- 
sion to  insert  a  copy  of  the  picture  referred  to. 


84  Thackeray  /  the  Humourist 

dent  publication  of  the  author,  but  of  its  contents 
few  things  are  now  remembered.  The  dedi- 
catory letter  prefixed,  however,  is  peculiarly 
characteristic  of  the  writer.  It  relates  to  a  cir- 
cumstance which  had  occurred  to  him  some  time 
previously  in  Paris.  The  old  days  when  money 
was  abundant,  and  loitering  among  the  pictures 
of  the  Paris  galleries  could  be  indulged  in  with- 
out remorse  had  gone.  The  res  angusta  domi 
with  which  genius  has  so  often  been  disturbed  in 
its  day-dreams  began  to  be  familiar  to  him.  The 
unfortunate  failure  of  the  Constitutional,, — a  loss 
which  he,  yea.rs  afterwards,  occasionally  referred 
to  as  a  foolish  commercial  speculation  on  which  he 
had  ventured  in  his  youth,  had  absorbed  the  whole 
of  his  patrimony.  At  such  a  time  a  temporary 
difficulty  in  meeting  a  creditor's  demand  was  not 
uncommon.  On  one  such  occasion,  a  M.  Aretz,  a 
tailor  in  the  Rue  Richelieu,  who  had  for  some  time 
supplied  him  with  coats  and  trousers,  presented  him 
with  a  small  account  for  those  articles,  and  was 
met  with  a  statement  from  his  debtor  that  an  im- 
mediate settlement  of  the  bill  would  be  extremely 
inconvenient  to  him.  To  his  astonishment  the 
reply  of  the  creditor  was,  "  Mon  Dieu,  Sir,  let 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  85 

not  that  annoy  you.  If  you  want  money,  as  a 
gentleman  often  does  in  a  strange  country,  I 
have  a  thousand  franc  note  at  my  house  which  is 
quite  at  your  service."  The  generous  offer  was 
accepted.  The  coin  which,  in  proof  of  the 
tailor's  esteem  for  his  customer,  was  advanced 
without  any  interest,  was  duly  repaid  together 
with  the  account ;  but  the  circumstance  could 
not  be  forgotten.  His  debtor  felt  how  becoming 
it  was  to  acknowledge,  and  praise  virtue,  as  he 
slyly  said,  wherever  he  might  find  it,  and  to  point 
it  out  for  the  admiration  and  example  of  his 
fellow-men.  Accordingly,  he  determined  to  dedi- 
cate his  first  book  to  the  generous  tailor,  giving 
at  full  length  his  name  and  address.  In  the  dedi- 
catory letter,  he  accordingly  alludes  to  this  anec- 
dote, adding — 

"  History  or  experience,  sir,  makes  us  ac- 
quainted with  so  few  actions  that  can  be  com- 
pared to  yours ;  a  kindness  like  yours,  from  a 
stranger  and  a  tailor,  seems  to  me  so  astonishing, 
that  you  must  pardon  me  for  thus  making  your 
virtue  public,  and  acquainting  the  English  nation 
with  ^your  merit  and  your  name.  Let  me  add, 
sir,  that  you  live  on  the  first  floor ;  that  your 


86  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist 

clothes  and  fit  are  excellent,  and  your  charges 
moderate  and  just ;  and,  as  an  humble  tribute  of 
my  admiration,  permit  me  to  lay  these  volumes 
at  your  feet. 

"  Your  obliged,  faithful  Servant, 

"  M.  A.  TITMAESH." 

A  second  edition  of  the  "  Paris  Sketch  Book  " 
was  announced  by  the  publisher,  Macrone — the 
same  publisher  who  had  a  few  years  before  given 
to  the  world  the  "  Sketches  by  Boz,"  the  first 
of  Mr.  Dickens'  publications ;  but  the  second 
edition  was  probably  only  one  of  those  conven- 
tional fictions  with  which  the  spirits  of  young 
authors  are  sustained.  Though  containing  many 
flashes  of  the  Titmarsh  humour,  many  eloquent 
passages,  and  nmch  interesting  reading  of  a  light 
kind,  the  public  took  but  a  passing  interest  in  it. 
Years  after,  in  quoting  its  title,  the  author  good- 
humouredly  remarked,  in  a  parenthesis,  that  some 
copies,  he  believed,  might  still  be  found  unsold  at 
the  publisher's ;  but  the  book  was  forgotten  and ' 
most  of  its  contents  were  rejected  by  the  writer 
when  preparing  his  selected  miscellanies  for  the 
press.  A  similar  couple  of  volumes  published  by 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  87 

Cunningham  in  1841,  under  the  title  of  "  Comic 
Tales  and  Sketches,  edited  and  illustrated  by 
Mr.  Michael  Angelo  Titmarsh,"  and  an  inde- 
pendent republication,  also  in  two  volumes,  of 
the  "  Yellowplush  Papers,"  from  "  Fraser,"  were 
somewhat  more  successful.  The  former  contained 
"  Major  Gahagan,"  and  "  The  Bedford-row  Con- 
spiracy," reprinted  from  "  The  New  Monthly," 
"  Stubbs's  Calendar,  or  the  Fatal  Boots,"  from 
Cruikshank's  u  Comic  Almanack ; "  some  amusing 
criticisms  on  the  "  Sea  Captain,"  and  "  Lady  Char- 
lotte Bury's  Diary,"  and  other  papers  from 
"  Fraser."  The  illustrations  to  the  volumes  were 
tinted  etchings  of  a  somewhat  more  careful  char- 
acter than  those  unfinished  artistic  drolleries  in 
which  he  generally  indulged. 

In  Dec.  1840,  he  again  visited  Paris,  and 
remained  there  until  the  summer  of  the  following 
year.  He  was  in  that  city  on  the  memorable 
occasion  of  the  second  funeral  of  Napoleon,  or  the 
ceremony  of  conveying  the  remains  of  that  great 
warrior,  of  whom,  as  a  child,  he  had  obtained  a 
living  glimpse,  to  their  last  resting  place  at  the 
Hotel  des  Invalides.  An  account  of  that  cere- 


88  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist 

mony  in  the  form  of  a  letter  to  Miss  Smith,  was 
published  by  Macrone.  It  was  a  small  square 
pamphlet,  chiefly  memorable  now  as  containing 
at  the  end  his  remarkable  poem  of  "  The  Chron- 
icle of  the  Drum."  About  this  time  he  adver- 
tised as  preparing  for  immediate  publication,  a 
book  entitled  "  Dinner  Reminiscences,  or  the 
Young  Gormandiser's  Guide  at  Paris,  by  Mr.  M.  A. 
Titmarsh."  It  was  to  be  issued  by  Hugh  Cunning- 
ham, the  publisher  of  St.  Martin's  place,  Trafal- 
gar-square ;  but  we  believe,  was  never  published. 
It  was  in  the  September  number  of  "  Fraser," 
for  1841,  that  he  commenced  his  story  of  the 
"  History  of  Samuel  Titmarsh,  and  the  Great 
Hoggarty  Diamond,"  which  though  it  failed  to 
achieve  an  extraordina/y  popularity,  first  con- 
vinced that  select  few  who  judge  for  themselves 
in  matters  of  literature  and  art,  of  the  great 
power  and  promise  of  the  unknown  "  Titmarsh." 
Mr.  Carlyle,  in  his  "  Life  of  John  Sterling," 
quotes  the  following  remarkable  passage  from  a 
letter  of  the  latter  to  his  mother,  written  at  this 
period  : — "  I  have  seen  no  new  books,  but  am 
reading  your  last.  I  got  hold  of  the  two  first 


the  Man  of  Letters.  89 


numbers  of  the  '  Hoggarty  Diamond,'  and  read 
them  with  extreme  delight.  What  is  there  better 
in  Fielding  or  Goldsmith?  The  man  is  a  true 
genius,  and  with  quiet  and  comfort  might  produce 
masterpieces  that  would  last  as  long  as  any  we 
have,  and  delight  millions  of  unborn  readers. 
There  is  more  truth  and  nature  in  one  of  these 
papers  than  in  all  -  's  novels  put  together." 
"  Thackeray  (adds  Mr.  Carlyle),  always  a  close 
friend  of  the  Sterling  house,  will  observe  that 
this  is  dated  1841,  not  1851,  and  will  have  his 
own  reflections  on  the  matter."  The  "  Hog- 
garty Diamond  "  was  continued  in  the  numbers 
for  October  and  November,  and  completed  in 
December,  1841.  In  the  number  for  June  of  the 
following  year,  "  Fitzboodle's  Confessions  "  were 
commenced,  and  were  continued  at  intervals  down 
to  the  end  of  1843.  The  "  Irish  Sketch  Book,"  in 
two  volumes,  detailing  an  Irish  tour,  was  also  pub- 
lished in  the  latter  year.  The  "  Sketch  Book,"  did 
not  at  the  time  attract  much  attention.  The  "  Luck 
of  Barry  Lyndon,"  by  many  considered  the  most 
original  of  his  writings,  was  begun  and  finished 
at  No.  88,  St.  James-street,  previously  known 


90  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist 

as  the  Conservative  Club,  where  at  this  time  he 
occupied  chambers.  The  first  part  appeared  in 
"  Fraser,"  for  January,  18M,  and  was  continued 
regularly  every  month,  till  its  completion  in  the 
December  number.  He  was  engaged  a  short  time 
before  this  as  assistant  editor  of  the  Examiner 
newspaper,  to  which  journal  he  contributed  nume- 
rous articles  ;  and  among  his  papers  in  "  Fraser," 
and  other  magazines  of  the  same  period,  we  find, 
"  Memorials  of  Gormandising ; "  "  Pictorial  Rhap- 
sodies on  the  Exhibitions  of  Paintings  ; "  "  Blue- 
beard's Ghost ; "  a  satirical  article  on  Grant's 
"  Paris  and  the  Parisians  ; "  a  "  Review  of  a  Box 
of  Novels,"  (already  quoted  from) ;  "  Little  Travels 
and  Roadside  Sketches,"  (chiefly  in  Belgium) ; 
"  ThePartie  fine,  by  Lancelot  "Wagstaff ;"  a  comic 
story  with  a  sequel  entitled  "Arabella,  or  the 
Moral  of  the  Partie  Fine  /  "  "  Carmen  Lilliense ; " 
"  Picture  Gossip  ; "  more  comic  sketches,  with  the 
titles  of  "  The  chest  of  Cigars,  by  Lancelot  "Wag- 
staff;  "  "  Bob  Robinson's  First  Love ; "  and  "  Barme- 
side  Banquets,"  and  an  admirable  satirical  review 
entitled  "  A  Gossip  about  Christmas  Books." 
The  u  Carmen  Lilliense  "  will  be  well  remem- 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  91 

bered  by  the  readers  of  the  "  Miscellanies,"  pub- 
lished in  1857,  in  which  it  was  included.  Mr. 
Thackeray  was  in  the  north  of  France  and  in 
Belgium  about  the  period  when  it  is  dated  (2nd 
September,  1843) ;  and  the  ballad  describes  a  real 
accident  which  befell  him,  though  doubtless  some- 
what heightened  in  effect.  It  tells  how  leaving 
Paris,  with  only  twenty  pounds  in  his  pocket,  for 
a  trip  in  Belgium,  he  arrived  at  Antwerp,  where 
feeling  for  his  purse,  he  found  it  had  vanished 
with  the  entire  amount  of  his  little  treasure. 
Some  rascal  on  the  road  had  picked  his  pocket ; 
and  nothing  was  left  but  to  borrow  ten  guineas  of 
a  friend  whom  he  met,  and  to  write  a  note  to 
England  addressed  to  "  Grandmamma,"  for  whom 
we  may  probably  read  some  other  member  of  the 
Titmarsh  family.  The  ten  guineas,  however,  were 
soon  gone,  and  the  sensitive  Titmarsh  found  him- 
self in  a  position  of  great  delicacy.  What  was  to 
be  done  ?  "  To  stealing,"  says  the  ballad,  "  he 
could  never  come."  To  pawn  his  watch  he  felt 
himself  "  too  genteel ; "  besides,  he  had  left  his 
watch  at  home,  which  at  once  put  an  end  to  any 
debates  on  this  point.  There  was  nothing  to  do 


92  Thackeray  y  the  Humourist 

but  to  wait  for  the  remittance,  and  beguile  the 
time  with  a  poetical  description  of  his  woes.  The 
guests  around  him  ask  for  their  bills.  Titmarsh 
is  in  agonies.  The  landlord  regards  him  as  a 
"  Lord- Anglais,"  serves  him  with  the  best  of 
meat  and  drink,  and  is  proud  of  his  patronage. 
A  sense  of  being  a  kind  of  impostor  weighs  upon 
him.  The  landlord's  eye  becomes  painful  to  look 
at.  Opposite  is  a  dismal  building — the  prison- 
house  of  Lille,  where,  by  a  summary  process, 
familiar  to  French  law,  foreigners  who  run  in 
debt  without  the  means  of  paying  may  be  lodged. 
He  is  almost  tempted  to  go  into  the  old  Flemish 
church  and  invoke  the  saints  there  after  the 
fashion  of  the  country.  One  of  their  pictures  on 
the  walls  becomes,  in  his  imagination,  like  the 
picture  of  "  Grandmamma,"  with  a  smile  upon 
its  countenance.  Delightful  dream  !  and  one  of 
good  omen.  He  returns  to  his  hotel,  and  there 
to  his  relief,  finds  the  long-expected  letter,  in  the 
well-known  hand,  addressed  to  "  Mr.  M.  A.  Tit- 
marsh,  Lille."  He  obtains  the  means  of  redeem- 
ing his  credit,  bids  farewell  to  his  host  without 
any  exposure,  takes  the  diligence,  and  is  restored 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  93 

to  his  home  that  evening.  Such  are  the  hu- 
mourous exaggerations  with  which  he  depicts 
his  temporary  troubles  at  Lille,  in  the  shape  of 
a  ballad,  originally  intended,  we  believe,  for  the 
amusement  of  his  family,  but  finally  inserted  in 
"  Fraser." 

It  was  in  July,  1844,  that  Mr.  Thackeray 
started  on  a  tour  in  the  East — the  result  of  a 
hasty  invitation,  and  of  a  present  of  a  free  pass 
from  a  friend  connected  with  the  Peninsular 
and  Oriental  Steam  Navigation  Company.  His 
sudden  departure,  upon  less  than  thirty-six  hours 
notice,  is  pleasantly  detailed  in  the  preface  to 
his  book,  published  at  Christmas,  1845,  with  the 
title  of  "  Notes  of  a  Journey  from  Cornhill  to 
Grand  Cairo  by  way  of  Lisbon,  Athens,  Constan- 
tinople, and  Jerusalem  :  performed  in  the  steam- 
ers of  the  Peninsular  and  Oriental  Company.. 
By  M.  A.  Titmarsh,  author  of  The  Irish  Sketch- 
book," &c. 

The  book  was  illustrated  with  coloured  draw- 
ings by  the  author,  treating,  in  a  not  exaggerated 
vein  of  fun,  the  peculiarities  of  the  daily  life  of 
the  East.  The  little  book  was  well  received,  and 


94  Thackera/y  ;  the  Humourist 

in  the  reviews  of  it  there  is  evidence  of  the  grow- 
ing interest  of  the  public  in  the  writer.  For  the 
first  time  it  presented  him  to  his  readers  in  his 
true  name,  for  though  the  "  Titmarsh  "  fiction  is 
preserved  on  the  title  page,  the  prefatory  matter 
is  signed  "  W.  M.  Thackeray." 

" '  Who  is  Titmarsh  ? '  says  one  of  his  critics  at 
this  time.  Such  is  the  ejaculatory  formula  in  which 
public  curiosity  gives  vent  to  its  ignorant  impa- 
tience of  pseudononymous  renown.  '  Who  is  Mi- 
chael Angelo  Titmarsh  \ '  Such  is  the  note  of  in- 
terrogation which  has  been  heard  at  intervals  these 
several  seasons  back,  among  groups  of  elderly 
loungers  in  that  row  of  clubs,  Pall-mall ;  from 
fairy  lips,  as  the  light  wheels  whirled  along  the 
row  called  '  Rotten,'  and  oft  amid  keen-eyed  men 
in  that  grand  father  of  rows,  which  the  children 
of  literature  call  Paternoster.  *  *  * 

"  This  problem  has  been  variously  and  conflict- 
ingly  solved,  as  in  the  parallel  case  of  the  grim, 
old,  stat  nommis  umbra.  There  is  a  hint  in  both 
instances  of  some  mysterious  connexion  with  the 
remote  regions  of  Bengal,  and  an  erect  old  pigtail 
of  the  E.I.C.S.,  boasts  in  the  '  horizontal '  jungle 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  95 

off  Hanover-square,  of  having  had  the  dubious 
advantage  of  his  personal  acquaintanceship  in 
Upper  India,  where  his  I  O  IPs  were  signed 
Major  Goliah  Gahagan ;  and  several  specimens 
of  that  documentary  character,  in  good  preserva- 
tion, he  offers  at  a  low  figure  to  amateurs." 

The  foundation  in  1841  of  a  weekly  periodical, 
serving  as  a  vehicle  for  the  circulation  of  the 
lighter  papers  of  humourists,  had  had  unquestion- 
ably an  important  influence  in  the  development 
of  his  talents  and  fame.  From  an  early  date  he 
was  connected  with  "  Punch,"  at  first  as  the 
"Fat  Contributor," "and  soon  after  as  the  author 
of  '  Jeames's  Diary,"  and  "  The  Snob  Papers." 
If  satire  could  do  aught  to  check  the  pride  of  the 
vulgar  upstart,  or  shame  social  hypocrisy  into 
truth  and  simplicity,  these  writings  would  accom- 
plish the  task.  In  fact  Thackeray's  name  was 
now  becoming  known,  and  people  began  to  dis- 
tinguish and  inquire  for  his  contributions;  his 
illustrations  in  "  Punch  "  being  as  funny  as  his 
articles  were.  The  series  called  "  Jeames's  Diary  " 
caused  great  amusement  and  no  little  flutter  in 
high  polite  circles,  for  the  deposition  from  the 


96  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist 

throne  of  railwaydom  of  the  famous  original  of 
"  Jeames  de  la  Pluche  "  had  hardly  then  begun, 
though  it  was  probably  accelerated  by  the  uni- 
versal titters  of  recognition  which  welcomed  the 
weekly  accounts  of  the  changing  fortunes  of 
"  Jeames." 

The  great  work,  however,  which  was  to  stamp 
the  name  of  Thackeray  for  ever  in  the  minds  of 
English  readers  was  yet  to  come.  Hitherto  all  his 
writings  had  been  brief  and  desultory ;  but  in  con- 
tributing to  magazines  his  style  had  gradually 
matured  itself.  That  ease  of  expression,  and  that 
repose  which  seems  so  full  of  power,  were  never 
more  exemplified  than  in  some  of  his  latest  essays 
in  "  Eraser,"  before  book  writing  had  absorbed 
all  his  time.  His  article  on  Sir  E.  B.  Lytton's 
"  Memoir  of  Laman  Blanchard,"  his  paper  "  On 
Illustrated  Children's  Books,"  his  satirical  pro- 
posal to  Mons.  Alexandre  Dumas  for  a  continua- 
tion of  "  Ivanhoe,"  all  contributed  to  "  Eraser  " 
in  1846,  and  his  article — we  believe  the  last 
which  he  wrote  for  that  periodical,  entitled  "  A 
Grumble  about  Christmas  Books,"  published  in 
January,  184Y,  are  equal  to  anything  in  his  later 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  97 

works.  The  first-mentioned  of  these  papers, 
indeed — the  remonstrance  with  Laman  Blan- 
chard's  biographer  is  unsurpassed  for  the  elo- 
quence of  its  defence  of  the  calling  of  men  of 
letters,  and  for  the  tenderness  and  manly  simpli- 
city with  which  it  touches  on  the  history  of  the 
unfortunate  subject  of  the  memoir. 

"  Mrs.  Perkins's  Ball,"  a  Christmas  Book,  was 
published  in  December,  1846.  But  its  author  had 
long  been  preparing  for  a  more  serious  under- 
taking ;  some  time  before,  he  had  sketched  some 
chapters  entitled  "  Pencil  Sketches  of  English 
Society,"  which  he  had  offered  to  the  late  Mr. 
Colburn  for  insertion  in  the  "  New  Monthly 
Magazine."  It  formed  a  portion  of  »  continuous 
story,  of  a  length  not  yet  determined,  and  was 
rejected  by  Mr.  Colburn  after  consideration.  The 
papers  which  Mr.  Thackeray  had  contributed  to 
the  "  New  Monthly "  were  chiefly  slight  comic 
stories — perhaps  the  least  favourable  specimens  of 
his  powers.  They  were,  indeed,  not  inferior  to 
the  common  run  of  magazine  papers,  and  were 
certainly  not  equal  to  his  contributions  to 
"  Fraser."  In  fact,  as  a  contributor  to  the  "  New 


98  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist 

Monthly,"  he  had  achieved  no  remarkable  success, 
and  his  papers  appear  to  have  been  little  in  de- 
mand there.  Whether  the  manuscript  had  been 
offered  to  "  Fraser " — the  magazine  in  which 
"  Titmarsh  "  had  secured  popularity,  and  where  he 
was  certainly  more  at  home,  we  cannot  say. 
Happily,  the  author  of  "  Pencil  Sketches  of  Eng- 
lish Society,"  though  suspending  his  projected 
work,  did  not  abandon  it.  He  saw  in  its  opening 
chapters — certainly  not  the  best  portions  of  the 
story  when  completed — the  foundations  of  a  work 
which  was  to  secure  him  at  last  a  fame  among 
contemporary  writers  in  his  own  proper  name. 
The  success  of  Mr.  Dickens's  shilling  monthly 
parts  suggested  to  him  to  make  it  the  commence- 
ment of  a  substantive  work  of  fiction,  to  be  pub- 
lished month  by  month,  with  illustrations  by  the 
author.  The  work  grew  up  by  degrees,  and  finally 
took  shape  under  the  better  title  of  "Vanity 
Fair."  It  was  during  this  time,  the  latter  part 
of  1846,  that  he  removed  to  his  house,  at  No. 
13,  Young-street,  Kensington,  a  favourite  locality 
with  him,  in  which  house  he  resided  for  some 
years.  He  also  at  this  time  occupied  chambers  at 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  99 

No.  10,  Crown-office-row,  Temple,  the  comfortable 
retirement  in  which  "  up  four  pair  of  stairs,  with 
its  grand  view,  when  the  sun  was  shining,  of  the 
chimney-pots  over  the  way,"  he  has  himself  de- 
scribed. His  friend,  Mr.  Tom  Taylor,  the  well- 
known  dramatist  and  biographer,  had  chambers  in 
the  same  house ;  and  we  believe,  on  the  demolition 
of  No.  10,  Crown-office-row,  wrote  a  poem,  publish- 
ed in  the  pages  of"  Punch,"  in  which,  if  we  remem- 
ber rightly,  mention  is  made  of  the  fact  of  Thack- 
eray's having  resided  there.  Mr.  Thackeray  was 
called  to  the  bar  by  the  Hon.  Society  of  the  Mid- 
dle Temple,  in  1848,  though  he  never  practised,  and 
never  probably  intended  to  do  so.  The  Benchers, 
however,  were  not  insensible  to  the  addition  to  the 
numerous  literary  associations  with  their  venerable 
and  quiet  retreat  which  they  thus  gained.  After 
h's  death,  there  w.:s  some  proposition  to  bury  him 
in  the  Temple,  of  which  he  was  a  member,  amid 

Those  bricky  towers 

The  which  on  Thames'  broad  back  do  ride 
Where  now  the  student  lawyers  have  their  bowers, 
Where  whilom  wont  the  Templar  Knights  to  bide, 
Till  they  decayed  through  pride. 

There  Goldsmith  is  buried,  and  Thackeray's  ashes 


100  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist 

would  have  been  fitly  laid  near  those  of  the  author 
of  the  "  Yicar  of  Wakefield,"  whose  brilliant 
genius  he  so  heartily  eulogised,  and  whose  many 
shortcomings  he  so  tenderly  touched  upon  in  the 
"  Lectures  on  the  Humourists."  But,  after  consul- 
tation with  his  family  it  was  deemed  better  that 
he  should  rest  with  his  own  people  in  Kensal 
Green.  Pending  this  decision,  the  sanction  of  the 
Benchers  to  interment  within  the  precincts  of  the 
Temple  Church  had  been  asked  and  cheerfully 
accorded,  and  when  the  Kensal  Green  Cemetery 
was  finally  decided  upon,  the  Benchers  were 
requested  to  permit  the  erection  of  a  memorial 
slab  in  their  church.  Their  reply  to  this  was, 
that  not  only  should  they  be  honoured  by  such  a 
memento,  but  that,  if  allowed,  they  would  have  it 
erected  at  their  own  cost.* 

*  Letter  of  Mr.  Edmund  Yates  in  the  Belfast  Whig. 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  101 


CHAPTER  IY. 

VANITY  PAIR — FIRST  MONTHLY  NUMBER — NOTICES  OF  THE 
EDINBURGH  REVIEW — A  LITTLE  CHRISTMAS  BOOK — LET- 
TER ON  THE  DIGNITY  OF  LITERATURE — ANNOYED  BY 
ADVERSE  CRITICISM — NOTICE  OF  THE  TIMES  CRITIQUE — 
BEGINS  TO  DELIVER  LECTURES — HIS  SUCCESS — LEC- 
TURES IN  AMERICA — HIS  SUCCESS — NOTICES  OF  NEWS- 
PAPERS— PREFACE  TO  AN  AMERICAN  EDITION  OF  HIS 
WORKS — PUBLICATION  OF  HENRY  ESMOND — INCIDENT  IN 
CONNEXION  WITH  THE  PUBLICATION  OF  THE  NEWCOME8 
— SECOND  JOURNEY  TO  THE  UNITED  STATES — LECTURES 
ON  THE  "  GEORGES " — ADDRESS  TO  THE  ELECTORS  OF 
OXFORD — THE  ELECTION — THACKERAY  AND  DICKENS — 
CORRESPONDENCE. 

THE  first  monthly  portion  of  "  Yanity  Fair  "  was 
published  on  the  1st  of  February,  1847,  in  the 
yellow  wrapper  which  served  to  distinguish  it 
from  Mr.  Dickens's  stories,  and  which  afterwards 
became  the  standard  colour  for  the  monthly 
wrappers  of  Mr.  Thackeray's  stories.  The  work 
was  continued  monthly,  and  finished  with  the 
number  for  July  of  the  following  year.  The 


102  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist 

friends  of  Mr.  Thackeray,  and  all  those  who  had 
watched  his  career  with  special  interest,  saw  in  it 
at  once  a  work  of  greater  promise  than  any  that 
had  appeared  since  the  dawn  of  Mr.  Dickens's 
fame  ;  but  the  critical  journals  received  it  some- 
what coldly.  One  of  the  most  influential  of  these 
journals,  in  the  first  numbers,  perhaps,  indicates 
best  the  tone  of  its  reception  at  this  early  period. 
It  is  generally  acknowledged  that,  to  the 
thoughtful  and  appreciative  article  in  the  "  Edin- 
burgh Review  "  of  January,  1848,  reviewing  the 
first  eleven  numbers  of  the  work  only,  is  due  the 
merit  of  first  authoritatively  calling  attention  to 
the  great  power  it  displayed.  The  writer  was 
evidently  one  who  knew  Mr.  Thackeray  well ; 
for  he  gives  a  sketch  of  his  life,  and  mentions 
having  met  him  some  years  before  painting  in  the 
Louvre  in  Paris.  "  In  forming  (says  this  judicious 
writer)  our  general  estimate  of  this  writer,  we 
wish  to  be  understood  as  referring  principally,  if 
not  exclusively,  to  *  Vanity  Fair '  (a  novel  in 
monthly  parts),  though  still  unfinished ;  so  im- 
measura]}ly  superior,  in  our  opinion,  is  this  to 
'every  other  known  production  of  his  pen.  The 


and  the  Mem  of  Letters.  103 

great  charm  of  this  work  is  its  entire  freedom 
from  mannerism  and  affectation  both  in  style  and 
sentiment — the  confiding  frankness  with  which 
the  reader  is  addressed — the  thoroughbred  care- 
lessness   with    which    the  -author    permits    the 
thoughts  and  feelings  suggested  by  the  situations 
to  flow  in  their  natural  channel,  as  if  conscious 
that  nothing  mean  or  unworthy,  nothing  requiring 
to  be  shaded,  gilded,  or  dressed  up  in  company 
attire,  could  fall  from  him.      In   a  word,  the 
book  is  the  work  of  a  gentleman,  which  is  one 
great  merit ;    and  not  the  work  of  a  fine  (or 
would-be  fine)  gentleman,  which  is  another.  Then, 
again,  he  never  exhausts,  elaborates,  or  insists  too 
much  upon  anything  ;  he  drops  his  finest  remarks 
and  happiest  illustrations  as  Buckingham  dropped 
his  pearls,  and  leaves  them  to  be  picked  up  and 
appreciated  as  chance  may  bring  a  discriminating 
observer  to  the  spot.     His  effects  are  uniformly 
the  effects  of  sound,  wholesome,  legitimate  art ; 
and  we  need  hardly  add,  that  we  are  never  har- 
rowed up  with  physical  horrors  of  the  Eugene 
Sue  school  in  his  writings,  or  that  there  are  no 
melodramatic  villains  to  be  found  in  them.    One 


104:  Thackeray  /  the  Humourist 

touch  of  nature  makes  the  whole  world  kin,  and 
here  are  touches  of  nature  by  the  dozen.  His 
pathos  (though  not  so  deep  as  Mr.  Dickens')  is 
exquisite ;  the  more  so,  perhaps,  because  he  seems 
to  struggle  against  it,  and  to  be  half  ashamed  of 
being  caught  in  the  melting  mood ;  but  the 
attempt  to  be  caustic,  satirical,  ironical,  or  philo- 
sophical, on  such  occasions,  is.  uniformly  vain ; 
and  again  and  again  have  we  found  reason  to 
admire  how  an  originally  fine  and  kind  nature 
remains  essentially  free  from  worldliness,  and,  in 
the  highest  pride  of  intellect,  pays  homage  to  the 
heart." 

It  was  at  this  time  that  his  friend  Mr.  Hannay 
tells  us  that  he  first  had  the  pleasure  of  seeing 
him.  "  '  Yanity  Fair,'  "  he  adds,  "  was  then 
unfinished,  but  its  success  was  made ;  and  he 
spoke  frankly  and  genially  of  his  work  and  his 
career.  *  Vanity  Fair,'  always,  we  think,  ranked 
in  his  own  mind  as  best  in  story  of  his  greater 
books  ;  and  he  once  pointed  out  to  us  the  very 
house  in  Russell-square  where  his  imaginary 
Sedleys  lived — a  curious  proof  of  the  reality  his 
creations  had  for  his  mind."  The  same  writer 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  105 

tells  us  that  when  he  congratulated  him,  many 
years  ago,  on  the  touch  in  "  Vanity  Fair  "  in  which 
Becky  admires  her  husband  when  he  is  giving 
Lord  Steyne  the  chastisement  which  ruins  her  for 
life,  the  author  answered  with  that  fervour  as 
well  as  heartiness  of  frankness  which  distinguished 
him : — "  Well,  when  I  wrote  the  sentence,  I 
slapped  my  fist  on  the  table,  and  said,  '  That  is  a 
touch  of  genius  !  "  "  Vanity  Fair  "  soon  after- 
wards rose  rapidly  in  public  favour,  and  a  new 
work  from  the  pen  of  its  author  was  eagerly 
looked  for. 

During  the  time  of  publication  of  "  Vanity 
Fair"  he  had  found  time  to  write  and  publish 
the  little  Christmas  book  entitled  "  Our  Street," 
which  appeared  in  December,  1847,  and  reached 
a  second  edition  soon  after  Christmas.  "  Vanity 
Fair "  was  followed  in  1849  with  another  long 
work  of  fiction,  entitled  the  "  History  of  Pen- 
dennis ;  his  Fortunes  and  Misfortunes,  his  Friends 
and  his  Greatest  Enemy ;  with  Illustrations  by  the 
Author  ; "  which  was  completed  in  two  volumes. 
In  this  year,  too,  he  published  "  Dr.  Birch  "  and 
"  Kebecca  and  Eowena."  It  was  during  the  pub- 
5* 


106  Thackeray  /  the  Humourist 

lication  of  "  Pendennis "  that  a  criticism  in  the 
Morning  Chronicle  and  in  the  Examiner  news- 
papers drew  from  him  the  following  remarkable 
letter  on  the  "  Dignity  of  Literature,"  addressed 
to  the  Editor  of  the  latter  journal : — 

"Reform  Club,  Jan.  8ZA,  1850. 

"  To  the  Editor  of  the  Morning  Chronicle. 

"  SIK, — In  a  leading  article  of  your  journal  of 
Thursday  the  3rd  instant  you  commented  upon 
literary  pensions  and  the  status  of  literary  men  in 
this  country,  and  illustrated  your  argument  by 
extracts  from  the  story  of '  Pendennis,'  at  present 
in  course  of  publication.  You  have  received  my 
writings  with  so  much  kindness  that,  if  you  have 
occasion  to  disapprove  of  them  or  the  author,  I 
can't  question  your  right  to  blame  me,  or  doubt 
for  a  moment  the  friendliness  and  honesty  of  my 
critic ;  and  however  I  might  dispute  the  justice 
of  your  verdict  in  my  case,  I  had  proposed  to 
submit  to  it  in  silence,  being  indeed  very  quiet 
in  my  conscience  with  regard  to  the  charge  made 
against  me.  But  another  newspaper  of  high 
character  and  repute  takes  occasion  to  question 
the  principles  advocated  in  your  article  of  Thurs- 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  107 

day ;  arguing  in  favour  of  pensions  for  literary 
persons,  as  you  argued  against  them  ;  and  the 
only  point  upon  which  the  Examiner  and  the 
Chronicle  appear  to  agree  unluckily  regards  my- 
self, who  am  offered  up  to  general  reprehension 
in  two  leading  articles  by  the  two  writers  :  by  the 
latter,  for  '  fostering  a  baneful  prejudice '  against 
literary  men ;  by  the  former,  for  '  stooping  to 
flatter '  this  prejudice  in  the  public  mind,  and  con- 
descending to  caricature  (as  is  too  often  my  habit) 
my  literary  fellow-labourers,  in  order  to  pay  court 
to  '  the  non-literary  class.'  The  charges  of  the 
Examiner  against  a  man  who  has  never,  to  his 
knowledge,  been  ashamed  of  his  profession,  or 
(except  for  its  dullness)  of  any  single  line  from,  his 
pen — grave  as  they  are,  are,  I  hope,  not  proven. 
*  To  stoop  to  flatter '  any  class  is  a  novel  accusa- 
tion brought  against  my  writings  ;  and  as  for  my 
scheme,  '  to  pay  court  to  the  non-literary  class  by 
disparaging  my  literary  fellow-labourers,'  it  is  a 
design  which  would  exhibit  a  degree  not  only  of 
baseness  but  of  folly  upon  my  part,  of  which,  I 
trust,  I  am  not  capable.  The  editor  of  the 
Examiner  may,  perhaps,  occasionally  write,  like 


108  Thackeray  /  the  Sumourist 

other  authors,  in  a  hurry,  and  not  be  aware  of  the 
conclusions  to  which  some  of  his  sentences  may 
lead.  If  I  stoop  to  flatter  anybody's  prejudice  for 
some  interested  motives  of  my  own,  I  am  no  more 
nor  less  than  a  rogue  and  a  cheat :  which  deduc- 
tions from  the  Examiner's  premises  I  will  not 
stoop  to  contradict,  because  the  premises  them- 
selves are  simply  absurd.  I  deny  that  the  con- 
siderable body  of  our  countrymen  described  by 
the  Examiner  as  *  the  non-literary  class '  has  the 
least  gratification  in  witnessing  the  degradation  or 
disparagement  of  literary  men.  "Why  accuse  '  the 
non-literary  class '  of  being  so  ungrateful  ?  If  the 
writings  of  an  author  give  a  reader  pleasure  or 
profit,  surely  the  latter  will  have  a  favourable 
opinion  of  the  person  who  so  benefits  him.  "What 
intelligent  man,  of  what  political  views,  would  not 
receive  with  respect  and  welcome  that  writer  of 
the  Examiner  of  whom  your  paper  once  said,  that 
'  he  made  all  England  laugh  and  think  ? '  Who 
would  deny  to  the  brilliant  wit,  that  polished 
satirist,  his  just  tribute  of  respect  and  admiration  ? 
Does  any  man  who  has  written  a  book  worth 
reading — any  poet,  historian,  novelist,  man  of 


cmd  the  Man  of  Letters.  109 

science — lose  reputation  by  his  character  for 
genius  or  for  learning?  Does  he  not,  on  thev 
contrary,  get  friends,  sympathy,  applause — money, 
perhaps  ? — all  good  and  pleasant  things  in  them- 
selves, and  not  ungenerously  awarded  as  they  are 
honestly  won.  That  generous  faith  in  men  of 
letters,  that  kindly  regard  in  which  the  whole 
reading  nation  holds  them,  appear  to  me  to  be  so 
clearly  shown  in  our  country  every  day,  that  to 
question  them  would  be  as  absurd  as,  permit  me 
to  say  for  my  part,  it  would  be  ungrateful. 
"What  is  it  that  fills  mechanics'  institutes  in  the 
great  provincial  towns  when  literary  men  are 
invited  to  attend  their  festivals  ?  Has  not  every 
literary  man  of  mark  his  friends  and  his  circle, 
his  hundreds  or  his  tens  of  thousands  of  readers  ? 
And  has  not  every  one  had  from  these  constant 
and  affecting  testimonials  of  the  esteem  in  which 
they  hold  him  ?  It  is  of  course  one  writer's  lot, 
from  the  nature  of  his  subject  or  of  his  genius,  to 
command  the  sympathies  or  awaken  the  curiosity 
of  many  more  readers  than  shall  choose  to  listen 
to  another  author  ;  but  surely  all  get  their  hear- 
ing. The  literary  profession  is  not  held  in  dis- 


110  Thackeray  /  the  Humourist 

repute ;  nobody  wants  to  disparage  it ;  no  man 
]oses  his  social  rank,  whatever  it  may  be,  by  prac- 
tising it.  On  the  contrary,  the  pen  gives  a  place 
in  the  world  to  men  who  had  none  before — a  fair 
place  fairly  achieved  by  their  genius  ;  as  any  other 
degree  of  eminence  is  by  any  other  kind  of  merit. 
Literary  men  need  not,  as  it  seems  to  me,  be  in 
the  least  querulous  about  their  position  any  more, 
or  want  the  pity  of  anybody.  The  money-prizes 
which  the  chief  among  them  get  are  not  so  high 
as  those  which  fall  to  men  of  other  callings — to 
bishops,  or  to  judges,  or  to  opera-singers  and 
actors ;  nor  have  they  received  stars  and  garters 
as  yet,  or  peerages  and  governorships  of  islands, 
such  as  fall  to  the  lot  of  military  officers.  The 
rewards  of  the  profession  are  not  to  be  measured 
by  the  money-standard :  for  one  man  spends  a 
life  of  learning  and  labour  on  a  book  which  does 
not  pay  the  printer's  bill,  and  another  gets  a  little 
fortune  by  a  few  light  volumes.  But,  putting  the 
money  out  of  the  question,  I  believe  that  the 
social  estimation  of  the  man  of  letters  is  as  good 
as  it  deserves  to  be,  and  as  good  as  that  of  any 
other  professional  man.  With  respect  to  the 


and  the  Mem  of  Letters.  Ill 

question  in  debate  between  you  and  the  Exam- 
iner as  to  the  propriety  of  public  rewards  and 
honours  for  literary  men,  I  don't  see  why  men 
of  letters  should  not  very  cheerfully  coincide  with 
Mr.  Examiner  in  accepting  all  the  honours, 
places,  and  prizes  which  they  can  get.  The 
amount  of  such  as  will  be  awarded  to  them  will 
not,  we  may  be  pretty  sure,  impoverish  the 
country  much  ;  and  if  it  is  the  custom  of  the  State 
to  reward  by  money,  or  titles  of  honour,  or  stars 
and  garters  of  any  sort,  individuals  who  do  the 
country  service,  and  if  individuals  are  gratified  at 
having  *  Sir '  or  '  My  lord '  appended  to  their 
names,  or  stars  and  ribands  hooked  on  their  coats 
and  waistcoats,  as  men  most  undoubtedly  are,  and 
as  their  wives,  families,  and  relations  are,  there 
can  be  no  reason  why  men  of  letters  should  not 
have  the  chance,  as  well  as  men  of  the  robe  or  the 
sword ;  or  why,  if  honour  and  money  are  good  for 
one  profession,  they  should  not  be  good  for  another. 
No  "man  in  other  callings  thinks  himself  degraded 
by  receiving  a  reward  from  his  Government ;  nor, 
surely,  need  the  literary  man  be  more  squeamish 
about  pensions,  and  ribands,  and  titles,  than  the 


112  Thackeray  j  the  Humourist 

ambassador,  or  general,  or  judge.  Every  European 
State  but  ours  rewards  its  men  of  letters ;  the 
American  Government  gives  them  their  full  share 
of  its  small  patronage  ;  and  if  Americans,  why 
not  Englishmen  ?  If  Pitt  Crawley  is  disappointed 
at  not  getting  a  riband  on  retiring  from  his  diplo- 
matic post  at  Pumpernickel,  if  General  O'Dowd 
is  pleased  to  be  called  Sir  Hector  O'Dowd,  K.C.B., 
and  his  wife  at  being  denominated  my  Lady 
O'Dowd,  are  literary  men  to  be  the  only  persons 
exempt  from  vanity,  and  is  it  to  be  a  sin  in  them 
to  covet  honour  ?  And  now,  with  regard  to  the 
charge  against  myself  of  fostering  baneful  preju- 
dices against  our  calling — to  which  I  no  more 
plead  guilty  than  I  should  think  Fielding  would 
have  done  if  he  had  been  accused  of  a  design  to 
bring  the  Church  into  contempt  by  describing 
Parson  Trulliber — permit  me  to  say,  that  before 
you  deliver  sentence  it  would  be  as  well  if  you  had 
waited  to  hear  the  whole  of  the  argument.  "Who 
knows  what  is  coming  in  the  future  numbers  of 
the  work  which  has  incurred  your  displeasure  and 
the  Examiner's,  and  whether  you,  in  accusing  me 
of  prejudice,  and  theJ?zamin&r,  (alas !)  of  swindling 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  113 

and  flattering  the  public,  have  not  been  premature  ? 
Time  and  the  hour  may  solve  this  mystery,  for 
which  the  candid  reader  is  referred  '  to  our  next.' 
That  I  have  a  prejudice  against  running  into  debt, 
and  drunkenness,  and  disorderly  life,  and  against 
quackery  and  falsehood  in  my  profession,  I  own  ; 
and  that  I  like  to  have  a  laugh  at  those  pretenders 
in  it  who  write  confidential  news  about  fashion 
and  politics  for  provincial  gobemouches  /  but  I  am 
not  aware  of  feeling  any  malice  in  describing  this 
weakness,  or  of  doing  anything  wrong  in  exposing 
the  former  vices.  Have  they  never  existed  amongst 
literary  men  ?  Have  their  talents  never  been  urged 
as  a  plea  for  improvidence,  and  their  very  faults 
adduced  as  a  consequence  of  their  genius  ?  The 
only  moral  that  I,  as  a  writer,  wished  to  hint  in 
the  descriptions  against  which  you  protest,  was, 
that  it  was  the  duty  of  a  literary  man,  as  well  as 
any  other,  to  practise  regularity  and  sobriety,  to 
love  his  family,  and  to  pay  his  tradesman.  Nor 
is  the  picture  I  have  drawn  '  a  caricature  which 
I  condescend  to,'  any  more  than  it  is  a  wilful  and 
insidious  design  on  my  part  to  flatter  '  the  non- 
literary  class.'  If  it  be  a  caricature,  it  is  the 


114:  Thackeray  /  the  Humourist 

result  of  a  natural  perversity  of  vision,  not  of  an 
artful  desire  to  mislead  :  but  my  attempt  was  to 
tell  the  truth,  and  I  meant  to  tell  it  not  unkindly. 
I  have  seen  the  bookseller  whom  Bludyer  robbed 
of  his  books  :  I  have  carried  money,  and  from  a 
noble  brother  man-of-letters,  to  some  one  not  un- 
like Shandon  in  prison,  and  have  watched  the 
beautiful  devotion  of  his  wife  in  that  dreary  place. 
Why  are  these  things  not  to  be  described,  if  they 
illustrate,  as  they  appear  to  me  to  do,  that  strange 
and  awful  struggle  of  good  and  wrong  which  takes 
place  in  our  hearts  and  in  the  world  ?  It  may  be 
that  I  worked  out  my  moral  ill,  or  it  may  be  pos- 
sible that  the  critic  of  the  Examiner  fails  in  ap- 
prehension. My  efforts  as  an  artist  come  perfectly 
within  his  province  as  a  censor;  but  when  Mr. 
Examiner  says  of  a  gentleman  that  he  is  '  stoop- 
ing to  flatter  a  public  prejudice,'  which  public 
prejudice  does  not  exist,  I  submit  that  he  makes 
a  charge  which  is  as  absurd  as  it  is  unjust ;  and 
am  thankful  that  it  repels  itself.  And,  instead  of 
accusing  the  public  of  persecuting  and  disparaging 

us  as  a  class,  it  seems  to  me  that  men  of  letters 
i 
had  best  silently  assume  that  they  are  as  good  as 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  115 

any  other  gentlemen,  nor  raise  piteous  controver- 
sies upon  a  question  which  all  people  of  sense 
must  take  to  be  settled.  If  I  sit  at  your  table,  I 
suppose  that  I  am  my  neighbour's  equal  as  that 
he  is  mine.  If  I  begin  straightway  with  a  protest 
of  '  Sir,  I  am  a  literary  man,  but  I  would  have  you 
to  know  I  am  as  good  as  you,'  which  of  us  is  it 
that  questions  the  dignity  of  the  literary  profes- 
sion— my  neighbour  who  would  like  to  eat  his 
soup  in  quiet,  or  the  man  of  letters  who  com- 
mences the  argument  ?  And  I  hope  that  a  comic 
writer,  because  he  describes  one  author  as  im- 
provident, and  another  as  a  parasite,  may  not 
only  be  guiltless  of  a  desire  to  vilify  his  profes- 
sion, but  may  really  have  its  honour  at  heart. 
If  there  are  no  spendthrifts  or  parasites  amongst 
us,  the  satire  becomes  unjust ;  but  if  such  exist, 
or  have  existed,  they  are  as  good  subjects  for 
comedy  as  men  of  other  callings.  I  never 
heard  that  the  Bar  felt  itself  aggrieved  because 
1  Punch '  chose  to  describe  Mr.  Dunup's  noto- 
rious state  of  insolvency,  or  that  the  picture  of 
Stiggins  in  '  Pickwick '  was  intended  as  an  in- 
sult to  all  Dissenters,  or  that  all  the  attorneys  in 


116  Thackeray  /  the  Humourist 

the  empire  were  indignant  at  the  famous  history 
of  the  firm  of  '  Quirk,  Gammon,  and  Snap  ; '  are 
we  to  be  passed  over  because  we  are  faultless,  or 
because  we  cannot  afford  to  be  laughed  at  ?  And 
if  every  character  in  a  story  is  to  represent  a 
class,  not  an  individual — if  every  bad  figure  is  to 
have  its  obliged  contrast  of  a  good  one,  and  a 
balance  of  vice  and  virtue  is  to  be  struck — novels, 
I  think,  would  become  impossible,  as  they  would 
be  intolerably  stupid  and  unnatural,  and  there 
would  be  a  lamentable  end  of  writers  and  readers 
of  such  compositions. 

"  Believe  me,  Sir,  to  be  your  very  faithful 
Servant, 

"  W.  M.  THACKEKAY." 

It  was  a  peculiarity  of  Mr.  Thackeray  to  feel 
annoyed  at  adverse  criticism,  and  to  show  his  an- 
noyance in  a  way  which  more  cautious  men  gene- 
rally abstain  from.  He  did  not  conceal  his  feel- 
ing when  an  unjust  attack  was  levelled  at  him 
in  an  influential  journal.  He  was  not  one  of 
those  remonstrators  who  never  see  anything  in 
the  papers,  but  have  their  "  attention  called  "  to 
them  by  friends.  If  he  had  seen,  he  frankly 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  117 

avowed  that  lie  had  seen  the  attack,  and  did  not 
scruple  to  reply  if  he  had  an  opportunity,  and 
the  influence  of  the  journal  or  reviewer  made  it 
worth  while,  and  with  the  Times  he  had  very 
early  had  a  bout  of  this  kind.  When  the  little 
account  of  the  funeral  of  Napoleon  in  1840  was 
published,  the  Times,  as  he  said,  rated  him,  and 
talked  in  "  its  own  great  roaring  way  about  the 
flippancy  and  conceit  of  Titmarsh,"  to  which  he 
had  replied  by  a  sharp  paragraph  or  two.  In 
1850  a  more  elaborate  attack  in  the  chief  journal 
roused  his  satirical  humour  more  completely. 
The  article  which  contained  the  offence  was  on 
the  subject  of  his  Christmas  Book,  entitled  "  The 
Knickleburys  on  the  Rhine,"  published  in  Dec. 
1850,  upon  which  a  criticism  appeared  in  that 
journal,  beginning  with  the  following  passage : — 
"  It  has  been  customary,  of  late  years,  for  the 
purveyors  of  amusing  literature — the  popular  au- 
thors of  the  day — to  put  forth  certain  opuscules, 
denominated  '  Christmas  Books,'  with  the  osten- 
sible intention  of  swelling  the  tide  of  exhilaration, 
or  other  expansive  emotions,  incident  upon  the 
exodus  of  the  old  and  the  inauguration  of  the 


118  Thackeray  j  the  Humourist 

new  year.  We  have  said  that  their  ostensible  in- 
tention was  such,  because  there  is  another  motive 
for  these  productions,  locked  up  (as  the  popular 
author  deems)  in  his  own  breast,  but  which  be- 
trays itself,  in  the  quality  of  the  work,  as  his 
principal  incentive.  Oh  !  that  any  muse  should 
be  set  upon  a  high  stool  to  cast  up  accounts  and 
balance  a  ledger  !  Yet  so  it  is  ;  and  the  popular 
author  finds  it  convenient  to  fill  up  the  declared 
deficit  and  place  himself  in  a  position  the  more 
effectually  to  encounter  those  liabilities  which 
sternly  assert  themselves  contemporaneously  and 
in  contrast  with  the  careless  and  free-handed  ten- 
dencies of  the  season  by  the  emission  of  Christ- 
mas books — a  kind  of  literary  assignats,  repre- 
senting to  the  emitter  expunged  debts,  to  the 
receiver  an  investment  of  enigmatical  value.  For 
the  most  part  bearing  the  stamp  of  their  origin 
in  the  vacuity  of  the  writer's  exchequer  rather 
than  in  the  fullness  of  his  genius,  they  suggest  by 
their  feeble  flavour  the  rinsings  of  a  void  brain 
after  the  more  important  concoctions  of  the  ex- 
pired year.  Indeed,  we  should  as  little  think  of 
taking  these  compositions  as  examples  of  the 


~and  the  Nam,  of  Letters.  119 

merits  of  their  authors  as  we  should  think  of 
measuring  the  valuable  services  of  Mr.  Walker, 
the  postman,  or  Mr.  Bell,  the  dust-collector,  by 
the  copy  of  verses  they  leave  at  our  doors  as  a 
provocative  of  the  expected  annual  gratuity — 
effusions  with  which  they  may  fairly  be  classed 
for  their  intrinsic  worth  no  less  than  their  ulti- 
mate purport." 

Upon  this,  and  upon  some  little  peculiarities 
of  style  in  the  review,  such  as  a  passage  in  which 
the  learned  critic  compared  the  author's  satirical 
attempts  to  the  sardonic  divings  after  the  pearl 
of  truth,  whose  lustre  is  eclipsed  in  the  display 
of  the  diseased  oyster,  Mr.  Thackeray  replied  in 
the  preface  to  a  second  edition  of  the  little  book, 
published  a  few  days  later,  and  entitled  "  An 
Essay  on  Thunder  and  Small  Beer."  The  style 
of  the  Times  critique,  which  was  generally  attri- 
buted to  the  late  Mr.  Samuel  Phillips,  afforded 
too  tempting  a  subject  for  the  satirical  pen  of  the 
author  of  "  Vanity  Fair  "  to  be  passed  over.  The 
easy  humour  with  which  he  exposed  the  pompous 
affectation  of  superiority  in  his  critic,  the  tawdry 
style  and  droll  logic  of  his  censor,  whom  he 


120  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist 

likened  not  to  the  awful  thunderer  of  Printing 
House-square,  but  to  the  thunderer's  man  "  Jupi- 
ter Jeaines,  trying  to  dazzle  and  roar  like  his 
awful  employer,"  afforded  the  town,  through  the 
newspapers  which  copied  the  essay,  an  amount 
of  amusement  not  often  derived  from  an  author's 
defence  of  himself  from  adverse  criticism.  The 
essay  was  remembered  long  after,  when  work 
after  work  of  Mr.  Thackeray  was  severely  han- 
dled in  the  same  paper,  and  the  recollection  of 
it  gave  a  shadow  of  support  to  the  theory  by 
which  some  persons,  on  the  recent  occasion  of 
Mr.  Thackeray's  death,  endeavoured  to  explain 
the  fact  that  the  obituary  notice  in  the  Times, 
and  the  account  of  his  funeral,  were  more  curt 
than  those  of  any  other  journal,  while  the  Times 
alone,  of  all  the  daily  papers,  omitted  to  insert 
a  leading  article  on  the  subject  of  the  great  loss 
which  had  been  sustained  by  the  world  of 
letters. 

In  1851,  Mr.  Thackeray  appeared  in  an  entirely 
new  character,  but  one  which  subsequently  proved 
so  lucrative  to  him,  that  to  this  cause,  even  more 
than  the  labours  of  his  pen,  must  be  attributed 


and  the  M<m  of  Letters.  121 

that  easy  fortune  which  he  had  accumulated  before 
he  died.  lu  May  of  that  year  he  commenced  a 
series  of  lectures  on  the  English  Humourists.  The 
subjects  were,  Swift ;  Congreve  and  Addison ; 
Steele  ;  Prior,  Gay,  and  Pope  ;  Hogarth,  Smollet 
and  Fielding,  and  Sterne  and  Goldsmith.  The 
lectures  were  delivered  at  Willis's  Booms.  The 
price  of  admission  was  high,  and  his  audience 
was  numerous,  and  of  the  most  select  kind.  It 
was  not  composed  of  that  sort  of  people  who 
crowd  to  pick  up  information  in  the  shape  of 
facts  with  which  they  have  been  previously  unac- 
quainted, but  those  who,  knowing  the  eminence 
of  the  lecturer,  wished  to  hear  his  opinion  on  a 
subject  of  national  interest.  One  of  the  two 
great  humourists  of  the  present  age  was  about  to 
utter  his  sentiments  on  the  humourists  of  the  age 
now  terminated,  and  the  occasion  was  sufficient 
to  create  an  interest  which  not  even  the  attractive 
power  of  the  Great  Exhibition,  then  open,  could 
check.  The  newspapers  complained  slightly  of 
the  low  key  in  which  the  lecturer  spoke,  from 
which  cause  many  of  his  best  points  were  some- 
times lost  to  the  more  distant  of  his  auditors. 
6 


122  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist 

"  In  other  respects,"  says  the  Times,  "  we  can- 
not too  highly  praise  the  style  of  his  delivery." 
Abstaining  from  rant  and  gesticulation,  he  relied 
for  his  effect  too  on  the  matter  which  he  uttered, 
and  it  was  singular  to  see  how  the  isolated 
pictures,  which  by  a  few  magic  touches  descended 
into  the  hearts  of  his  hearers.  Among  the  most 
conspicuous  of  the  literary  ladies  at  this  gathering 
was  Miss  Bronte,  the  authoress  of  "  Jane  Eyre." 
She  had  never  before  seen  the  author  of  "  Yanity 
Fair,"  though  the  second  edition  of  her  own 
celebrated  novel  was  dedicated  to  him  by  her, 
with  the  assurance  that  she  regarded  him  "  as 
the  social  regenerator  of  his  day — as  the  very 
master  of  that  working  corps  who  would  restore 
to  rectitude  the  warped  state  of  things."  Mrs. 
Gaskell  tells  us  that,  when  the  lecture  was  over, 
the  lecturer  descended  from  the  platform,  and 
making  his  way  towards  her,  frankly  asked  her 
for  her  opinion.  "This,"  adds  Miss  Bronte's 
biographer,  "  she  mentioned  to  me  not  many  days 
afterwards,  adding  remarks  almost  identical  with 
those  which  1  subsequently  read  in  '  Villette,' 
where  a  similar  action  on  the  part  of  M.  Paul 


and  the  Mem  of  Letters.  123 

Emanuel  is  related."  The  remarks  of  this  sin- 
gular woman  upon  Mr.  Thackeray  and  his  writ- 
ings, and  her  accounts  of  her  interviews  with 
him,  are  curious :  they  will  be  found  scattered 
about  Mrs.  Gaskell's  popular  biography.  Read- 
ers of  the  "  Cornhill  Magazine "  will  not  have 
forgotten  Mr.  Thackeray's  affectionate  and  dis- 
criminating sketch  of  her,  which  appears  some 
years  later  in  that  periodical. 

The  course  was  perfectly  successful,  and  the 
Lectures,  subsequently  reprinted,  rank  among  the 
most  beautiful  writings.  They  were  delivered 
again  soon  afterwards  in  some  of  the  provincial 
cities,  including  Edinburgh.  A  droll  anecdote 
was  related  at  this  period  in  the  newspapers,  in 
connection  with  these  provincial  appearances. 

Previously  to  delivering  them  in  Scotland,  the 
lecturer  bethought  himself  of  addressing  them  to 
the  rising  youth  of  our  two  great  nurseries  of  the 
national  mind  ;  and  it  was  necessary,  before  ap- 
pearing at  Oxford,  to  obtain  the  license  of  the 
authorities — a  very  laudable  arrangement  of 
course.  The  Duke  of  Wellington  was  the  Chan- 
cellor, who,  if  applied  to  would  doubtless  have 


124  Thackeray  /  the  Humourist 

understood  at  once  the  man  and  his  business. 
The  Duke  lives  in  the  broad  atmosphere  of  the 
every-day  world,  and  a  copy  of  the  "  Snob  Papers  " 
is  on  a  snug  shelf  at  Walmer  Castle.     But  his 
dignity  at  Oxford,  on  whom  the  modest  applicant 
waited,  knew  less  about  such  trifles  as  "  Vanity 
Fair  "  and  "  Pendennis."     "  Pray  what  can  I  do 
to  serve  you,  sir  ? "  inquired  the  bland  functionary. 
"  My  name  is  Thackeray."     "  So  I  see  by  this 
card."     "  I  seek  permission  to  lecture  within  the 
precincts."     "  Ah !    you  are   a  lecturer ;    what 
subjects   do  you  undertake — religious  or  polit- 
ical ? "       "  Neither ;    I    am    a    literary    man." 
"  Have  you  written  anything  ? "    "  Yes  ;   I  am 
the  author  of  '  Yanity  Fair.' '       "  I  presume  a 
dissenter — has  that  anything  to  do  with  John 
Bunyan's  book  ?  "     "  Not  exactly  ;  I  have  also 
written  *  Pendennis.' '      "  Never  heard  of  these 
works  ;  but  no  doubt  they  are  proper  books."    "  I 
have  also  contributed  to  '  Punch.' }!     "  '  Punch  ! ' 
I  have  heard  of  that ;  is  it  not  a  ribald  publica- 
tion?" 

An    invitation    to    deliver    the    lectures    in 
America  speedily  followed.    The  public  interest 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  125 


which  heralded  his  coining  in  the  United  States 
was  such  as  could  hardly  have  been  expected  for 
a  writer  of  fiction,  who  had  won  his  fame  by  so 
little  appeal  to  the  love  of  exciting  scenes. 

His  visit  (as  an  American  critic  remarked,) 
at  least  demonstrated,  that  if  they  were  unwilling 
to  pay  English  authors  for  their  books,  they  were 
ready  to  reward  them  handsomely  for  the  oppor- 
tunity of  seeing  and  hearing  them. 

At  first,  the  public  feeling  on  the  other  side  of 
the  Atlantic  had  been  very  much  divided  as  to 
his  probable  reception.  "  He'll  come  and  humbug 
us,  eat  our  dinners,  pocket  our  money,  and  go 
home  and  abuse  us,  like  Dickens,"  said  Jonathan, 
chafing  with  the  remembrance  of  that  grand  ball 
at  the  Park  Theatre,  and  the  Boz  tableaux,  and 
the  universal  wining  and  dining,  to  which  the 
author  of  "  Pickwick  "  was  subject  while  he  was 
our  guest.  "  Let  him  have  his  say,"  said  others, 
"  and  we  will  have  our  look.  "We  will  pay  a 
dollar  to  hear  him,  if  we  can  see  him  at  the  same 
time  ;  and  as  for  the  abuse,  why  it  takes  even 
more  than  two  such  cubs  of  the  roaring  British 
lion  to  frighten  the  American  eagle.  Let  him 


126  Thackeray  /  the  Humourist 

come,  and  give  him  fair  play."  He  did  come, 
and  certainly  had  his  fair  play.  There  was  cer- 
tainly no  disappointment  with  his  lectures.  Those 
who  knew  his  books  found  the  author  in  the  lec- 
turer. Those  who  did  not  know  the  books,  says 
one  critic,  "  were  charmed  in  the  lecturer  by 
what  is  charming  in  the  author,  the  unaffected 
humanity,  the  tenderness,  the  sweetness,  the 
genial  play  of  fancy,  and  the  sad  touch  of  truth, 
with  that  glancing  stroke  of  satire,  which,  light- 
ning-like, illumines  while  it  withers."  He  did 
not  visit  the  West,  nor  Canada.  He  went  home 
without  seeing  Niagara  Falls.  But  wherever  .he 
did  go,  he  found  a  generous  social  welcome,  and 
a  respectful  and  sympathetic  hearing.  Ho 
came  to  fulfil  no  mission  ;  but  it  was  felt  that  his 
visit  had  knit  more  closely  the  sympathy  of  the 
Americans  with  Englishmen.  Heralded  by  various 
romantic  memoirs,  he  smiled  at  them,  stoutly  as- 
serted that  he  had  been  always  able  to  command 
a  good  dinner,  and  to  pay  for  it ;  nor  did  he  seek 
to  disguise  that  he  hoped  his  American  tour 
would  help  him  to  command  and  pay  for  more. 
He  promised  not  to  write  a  book  about  the 
Americans,  and  he  kept  his  word. 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  127 

i 

His  first  lecture  was  delivered  to  a  crowded 
audience.  On  the  19th  of  November,  he  com- 
menced his  lectures  before  the  Mercantile  Library 
Association,  in  the  spacious  New  York  Church 
belonging  to  the  congregation  presided  over  by 
the  Rev.  Dr.  Chapin. 

Before  many  days,  the  publishers  told  the 
world  that  the  subject  of  Mr.  Thackeray's  talk 
had  given  start  to  a  Swift  and  Congreve  and 
Addison  furor.  The  booksellers  were  driving  a 
thrifty  trade  in  forgotten  volumes  of  "  Old  Eng- 
lish Essayists  ; "  the  "  Spectator  "  found  its  way 
again  to  the  parlour-tables ;  old  "  Sir  Roger  de 
Coverley"  was  waked  up  from  his  long  sleep. 
"  Tristram  Shandy  "  even,  was  almost  forgiven  his 
lewdness  ;  and  the  "  Ass  of  Melun,"  and  poor  Le 
Fevre  were  studied  wistfully,  and  placed  on  the 
library-table  between  "  Gulliver  "  and  the  "Rake's 
Progress."  Girls  were  working  Maria's  pet  lamb 
upon  their  samplers ;  and  hundreds  of  Lilliput 
literary  ladies  were  twitching  the  mammoth  Gul- 
liver's whiskers. 

The  newspaper  gossippers  were  no  less  busy  in 
noting  every  personal  characteristic  of  the  author. 


128  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist 

One  remarks  : — "  As  for  the  man  himself  who  has 
inoculated  us,  he  is  a  stout,  healthful,  broad- 
shouldered  specimen  of  a  man,  with  cropped 
greyish  hair,  and  keenish  grey  eyes,  peering  very 
sharply  through  a  pair  of  spectacles  that  have  a 
very  satirical  focus.  He  seems  to  stand  strongly 
on  his  own  feet,  as  if  he  would  not  be  easily  blown 
about  or  upset,  either  by  praise  or  pugilists ;  a 
man  of  good  digestion,  who  takes  the  world  easy, 
and  scents  all  shams  and  humours  (straightening 
them  between  his  thumb  and  forefinger)  as  he 
would  a  pinch  of  snuff."  A  London  letter  of  the 
time  says : — "  The  New  York  Journalists  preserve, 
on  the  whole,  a  delicate  silence  (very  creditable 
to  them)  on  the  subject  of  Mr.  Thackeray's  nose ; 
but  they  are  eloquent  about  his  legs  ;  and  when 
the  last  mail  left,  a  controversy  was  raging  among 
them  on  this  matter,  one  party  maintaining  that 
'he  stands  very  firm  on  his  legs,'  while  the 
opposition  asserted  that  his  legs  were  decidedly 
*  shaky.' " 

These,  however,  were  light  matters  compared 
with  the  notices  in  other  newspapers  which  un- 
scrupulously raked  together,  for  the  amusement 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  129 

of  their  readers,  details  which  were  mostly  untrue, 
and  where  true,  were  of  too  private  a  character 
for  public  discussion.  This  led  to  a  humorous 
remonstrance,  forwarded  by  Mr.  Thackeray  to 
"  Fraser's  Magazine,"  where  it  appeared  with  the 
signature  of  "  John  Small."  In  this  he  gave  a 
droll  parody  of  his  newspaper  biographers'  style, 
which  caused  some  resentment  on  the  part  of  the 
writers  attacked.  One  transatlantic  'defender  of 
the  New  York  press  said  that  "  the  two  most 
personal  accounts  of  Thackeray  published  appear- 
ed in  some  Liverpool  paper,  and  in  the  London 
Spectator  ;  "  adding,  "  the  London  correspondents 
of  some  of  the  provincial  papers  spare  nothing 
of  fact  or  comment  touching  the  private  life  of 
public  characters.  Nay,  are  there  not  journals 
expressly  devoted  to  the  contemporary  biography 
of  titled,  wealthy,  and  consequential  personages, 
which  will  tell  you  how,  and  in  what  company, 
they  eat,  drink,  and  travel ;  their  itinerary  from 
the  country  to  London,  and  from  the  metropolis 
to  the  Continent ;  the  probable  marriages,  alli- 
ances, &c.  ?  No  journal  can  be  better  acquainted 
with  these  conditions  of  English  society  than  the 
6* 


130  Thackeray  y  the  Humourist 

classical  and  vivacious  '  Eraser.'  Why,  then,  does 
John  Small  address  that  London  editor  from  New 
York,  converting  some  paltry  and  innocent-enough 
penny-a-liner  notice  of  the  author  of '  Vanity  Fair ' 
into  an  enormous  national  sin  and  delinquency." 

Among  the  lectures  delivered  at  New  York, 
before  he  quitted  the  gay  circles  of  that  Empire 
City  for  Boston,  was  one  in  behalf  of  a  charity  ; 
and  the  charity  lecture  was  stated  to  be  a  melange 
of  all  the  others,  closing  very  appropriately  with 
an  animated  tribute  to  the  various,  literary,  social, 
and  humane  qualities  of  Mr.  Charles  Dickens. 
"  Papa,"  he  describes  his  daughter  as  exclaiming, 
"  Papa,  I  like  Mr.  Dickens's  book  much  better 
than  yours." 

The  remonstrance  of  John  Small  in  "  Fraser," 
however,  did  not  conclude  without  a  warm  acknow- 
ledgment of  the  general  kindness  he  had  received 
in  America,  so  beautifully  expressed  in  his  last 
lecture  of  the  series,  delivered  on  the  7th  of  April. 
"  In  England,"  he  said,  "  it  was  my  custom,  after 
the  delivery  of  these  lectures,  to  point  such  a  moral 
as  seemed  to  befit  the  country  I  lived  in,  and  to 
protest,  against  an  outcry  which  some  brother 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  131 

authors  of  mine  most  imprudently  and  unjustly 
raise,  when  they  say  that  our  profession  is  neg- 
lected and  its  professors  held  in  light  esteem. 
Speaking  in  this  country,  I  would  say  that  such 
a  complaint  could  not  only  not  be  advanced,  but 
could  not  even  be  understood  here,  where  your 
men  of  letters  take  their  manly  share  in  public 
life ;  whence  Everett  goes  as  minister  to  Wash- 
ington, and  Irving  and  Bancroft  to  represent  the 
republic  in  the  old  country.  And  if  to  English 
authors  the  English  public  is,  as  I  believe,  kind  and 
just  in  the  main,  can  any  of  us  say,  will  any  who 
visit  your  country  not  proudly  and  gratefully 
own,  with  what  a  cordial  and  generous  greeting 
you  receive  us  ?  I  look  around  on  this  great 
company.  I  think  of  my  gallant  young  patrons 
of  the  Mercantile  Library  Association,  as  whose 
servant  I  appear  before  you,  and  of  the  kind  hand 
stretched  out  to  welcome  me  by  men  famous  in 
letters,  and  honoured  in  our  own  country  as  in 
their  own,  and  I  thank  you  and  them  for  a  most 
kindly  greeting  and  a  most  generous  hospitality. 
At  home  and  amongst  his  own  people,  it  scarce 
becomes  an  English  writer  to  speak  of  himself; 


132  Tfiackerwy ,'  the  Humourist 

his  public  estimation  must  depend  on  his  works  ; 
his  private  esteem  on  his  character  and  his  life. 
But  here,  among  friends  newly  found,  I  ask  leave 
to  say  that  I  am  thankful ;  and  I  think  with  a 
grateful  heart  of  those  I  leave  behind  me  at  home, 
who  will  be  proud  of  the  welcome  you  hold  out 
to  me,  and  will  benefit,  please  God,  when  my 
days  of  work  are  over,  by  the  kindness  which  yon 
show  to  their  father." 

A  still  more  interesting  paper  was  his  Preface 
to  Messrs.  Appleton  and  Co.'s  New  York  edition 
of  his  minor  works.  Readers  will  remember  Mr. 
Thackeray's  droll  account,  in  one  of  his  lectures, 
of  his  first  interview  with  the  agent  of  Appleton 
and  Co.,  when  holding  on,  sea-sick,  to  the  bul- 
warks of  the  New  York  steam-vessel  on  his  out- 
ward voyage.  The  preface  referred  to  contains 
evidence  that  the  appeal  of  the  energetic  represen- 
tative of  that  well-known  publishing  house  was 
not  altogether  fruitless.  It  is  as  follows  : — 

"  On  coming  into  this  country  I  found  that  the  pro- 
jectors of  this  series  of  little  books  had  preceded  my 
arrival  by  publishing  a  number  of  early  works,  which 
have  appeared  under  various  pseudonyms  during  the 
last  fifteen  years.  I  was  not  the  master  to  choose  what 


mid  the  Man  of  Letters.  133 

stories  of  mine  should  appear  or  not ;  these  miscel- 
lanies were  all  advertised,  or  in  course  of  publication ; 
nor  have  I  had  the  good  fortune  to  be  able  to  draw  a 
pen,  or  alter  a  blunder  of  author  or  printer,  except  in 
the  case  of  the  accompanying  volumes  which  contain 
contributions  to  '  Punch,'  whence  I  have  been  enabled 
to  make  something  like  a  selection.  In  the  '  Letters 
of  Mr.  Brown,'  and  the  succeeding  short  essays  and 
descriptive  pieces,  something  graver  and  less  burlesque 
was  attempted  than  in  other  pieces  which  I  here  pub- 
lish. My  friend,  the  '  Fat  Contributor,'  accompanied 
Mr.  Titmarsh  in  his  '  Journey  from  Cornhill  to  Cairo.' 
The  prize  novels  contain  imitations  of  the  writings  of 
some  contemporaries  who  still  live  and  flourish  in  the 
novelists'  calling.  I  myself  had  scarcely  entered  on  it 
when  these  burlesque  tales  were  begun,  and  stopped 
further  parody  from  a  sense  that  this  merry  task  of 
making  fun  of  the  novelists  should  be  left  to  younger 
hands  than  my  own ;  and,  in  a  little  book  published 
some  four  years  since,  in  England,  by  my  friends 
Messrs.  Hannay  and  Shirley  Brooks,  I  saw  a  caricature 
of  myself  and  writings  to  the  full,  as  ludicrous  and 
faithful  as  the  prize  novels  of  Mr.  Punch.  Nor  was 
there,  had  I  desired  it,  any  possibility  of  preventing 
the  reappearance  of  these  performances.  Other  pub- 
lishers, besides  the  Messrs.  Appleton,  were  ready  to 
bring  my  hidden  works  to  the  light.  Very  many  of 
the  other  books  printed,  I  have  not  seen  since  their 
appearance  twelve  years  ago,  and  it  was  with  no  small 
feelings  of  curiosity  (remembering  under  what  sad 
circumstances  the  tale  had  been  left  unfinished)  that  I 


134  TJiackeray  y  the  Humourist 


bought  the  incomplete  '  Shabby  Genteel  Story,'  in  a 
railway  car,  on  my  first  journey  from  Boston  hither, 
from  a  rosy-cheeked,  little  peripatetic  book  merchant, 
who  called  out  '  Thackeray's  Works,'  in  such  a  kind, 
gay  voice,  as  gave  me  a  feeling  of  friendship  and 
welcome. 

"  There  is  an  opportunity  of  being  either  satiric  or 
sentimental.  The  careless  papers  written  at  an  early 
period,  and  never  seen  since  the  printer's  boy  carried 
them  away,  are  brought  back  and  laid  at  the  father's 
door ;  and  he  cannot,  if  he  would,  forget  or  disown  his 
own  children. 

"  Why  were  some  of  the  little  brats  brought  out  of 
their  obscurity  ?  I  own  to  a  feeling  of  anything  but 
pleasure  in  reviewing  some  of  these  misshapen  juvenile 
creatures,  which  the  publisher  has  disinterred  and  re- 
suscitated. There  are  two  performances  especially, 
(among  the  critical  and  biographical  works  of  the 
erudite  Mr.  Yellowplush)  which  I  am  very  sorry  to 
see  reproduced ;  and  I  ask  pardon  of  the  author  of  the 
'  Caxtons'  for  a  lampoon,  which  I  know  he  himself  has 
forgiven,  and  which  I  wish  I  could  recall. 

"  I  had  never  seen  that  eminent  writer  but  once  in 
public  when  this  satire  was  penned,  and  wonder  at  the 
recklessness  of  the  young  man  who  could  fancy  such 
personality  was  harmless  jocularity,  and  never  calcu- 
late that  it  might  give  pain.  The  best  experiences  of 
my  life  have  been  gained  since  that  time  of  youth  and 
gaiety,  and  careless  laughter.  I  allude  to  them,  per- 
haps, because  I  would  not  have  any  kind  and  friendly 
American  reader  judge  of  me  by  the  wild  performances 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  135 


of  early  years.  Such  a  retrospect  as  the  sight  of  these 
old  acquaintances  perforce  occasioned,  cannot,  if  it 
would,  be  gay.  The  old  scenes  return,  the  remem- 
brance of  the  bygone  time,  the  chamber  in  which  the 
stories  were  written,  the  faces  that  shone  round  the 
table. 

"  Some  biographers  in  this  country  have  been  pleased 
to  depict  that  homely  apartment  after  a  very  strange 
and  romantic  fashion ;  and  an  author  in  the  direst 
struggles  of  poverty,  waited  upon  by  a  family  domestic 
in  '  all  the  splendour  of  his  menial  decorations,'  has 
been  circumstantially  described  to  the  reader's  amuse- 
ment as  well  as  to  the  writer's  own.  I  may  be  per- 
mitted to  assure  the  former  that  the  splendour  and 
the  want  were  alike  fanciful ;  and  that  the  meals  were 
not  only  sufficient  but  honestly  paid  for. 

"  That  extreme  liberality  with  which  American 
publishers  have  printed  the  works  of  English  authors 
has  had  at  least  this  beneficial  result  for  us,  that  our 
names  and  writings  are  known  by  multitudes  using 
our  common  mother  tongue,  who  never  had  heard  df 
us  or  our  books  but  for  the  speculators  who  have  sent 
them  all  over  this  continent. 

"  It  is,  of  course,  not  unnatural  for  the  English  writer 
to  hope  that  some  day  he  may  share  a  portion  of  the 
profits  which  his  works  bring  at  present  to  the  persons 
who  vend  them  in  this  country ;  and  I  am  bound 
gratefully  to  say  myself,  that  since  my  arrival  here  I 
have  met  with  several  publishing  houses  who  are  will- 
ing to  acknowledge  our  little  claim  to  participate  in  the 
advantages  arising  out  of  our  books ;  and  the  present 


136  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist 


writer  having  long  since  ascertained  that  a  portion  of  a 
loaf  is  more  satisfactory  than  no  bread  at  all,  grate- 
fully accepts  and  acknowledges  several  slices  which  the 
book-purveyors  in  this  city  have  proffered  to  him  of 
their  own  free-will. 

"  If  we  are  not  paid  in  full  and  in  specie  as  yet, 
English  writers  surely  ought  to  be  thankful  for  the 
very  great  kindness  and  friendliness  with  which  the 
American  public  received  them ;  and  if  in  hope  some 
day  that  measures  may  pass  here  to  legalize  our  right 
to  profit  a  little  by  the  commodities  which  we  invent 
and  in  which  we  deal,  I  for  one  can  cheerfully  say  that 
the  good-will  towards  us  from  publishers  and  public  is 
undoubted,  and  wait  for  still  better  times  with  perfect 
confidence  and  humour. 

"  If  I  have  to  complain  of  any  special  hardship,  it  is, 
not  that  our  favourite  works  are  reproduced,  and  our 
children  introduced  to  the  American  public — children 
whom  we  have  educated  with  care,  and  in  whom  we 
take  a  little  paternal  pride — but  that  ancient  magazines 
are  ransacked,  and  shabby  old  articles  dragged  out, 
which  we  had  gladly  left  in  the  wardrobes  where  they 
have  lain  hidden  many  years.  There  is  no  control,  how- 
ever, over  a  man's  thoughts — once  uttered  and  printed, 
back  they  may  come  upon  us  on  any  sudden  day ;  and 
in  this  collection  which  Messrs.  Appleton  are  publishing, 
I  find  two  or  three  such  early  productions  of  my  own  that 
I  gladly  would  take  back,  but  that  they  have  long  since 
gone  out  of  the  paternal  guardianship. 

"  If  not  printed  in  this  series,  they  would  have  ap- 
peared from  other  presses,  having  not  the  slightest  need 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  137 

of  the  author's  own  imprimatur ;  and  I  cannot  sufficiently 
condole  with  a  literary  gentleman  of  this  city,  who  (in  his 
voyages  of  professional  adventure)  came  upon  an  early 
performance  of  mine,  which  shall  be  nameless,  carried  the 
news  of  the  discovery  to  a  publisher  of  books,  and  hnd 
actually  done  me  the  favour  to  sell  my  book  to  that 
liberal  man ;  when,  behold,  Messrs.  Appleton  announced 
the  book  in  the  press,  and  my  confrere  had  to 
refund  the  prize-money  which  had  been  paid  to  him. 
And  if  he  is  a  little  chagrined  at  finding  other  intrepid 
voyagers  beforehand  with  him  in  taking  possession  of 
my  island,  and  the  American  flag  already  floating  there,  he 
will  understand  the  feelings  of  the  harmless  but  kindly- 
treated  aboriginal  who  makes  every  sign  of  peace,  who 
smokes  the  pipe  of  submission,  and  meekly  acquiesces  in 
his  own  annexation. 

.  "  It  is  said  that  those  only  who  win  should  laugh  :  I 
think,  in  this  case,  my  readers  will  not  grudge  the  losing 
side  its  share  of  harmless  good-humour.  If  I  have 
contributed  to  theirs,  or  provided  them  with  means  of 
amusement,  I  am  glad  to  think  my  books  have  found 
favour  with  the  American  public,  as  I  am  proud  to  own 
the  great  and  cordial  welcome  with  which  they  have 
received  me. 

"  W.  M.  THACKEKAY. 
"  New  York,  December,  1852." 

Such  words  could  not  fail  to  be  gratifying  to 
the  American  people,  as  an  evidence  of  Thacke- 
ray's sense  of  the  reception  he  had  received,  and 


138  Thackeray  /  the  Humourist 

in  spite  of  a  slight  misunderstanding  founded  on 
a  mistake  and  speedily  cleared  up,  it  may  be  said 
that  no  English  writer  of  fiction  was  ever  more 
popular  in  the  United  States. 

The  publication  of  "  The  Adventures  of  Henry 
Esmond,"  which  appeared  just  as  its  author  was 
starting  for  America  in  1852,  marked  an  impor- 
tant epoch  in  his  career.  It  was  a  continuous 
story,  and  one  worked  out  with  closer  attention  to 
the  thread  of  the  narrative  than  he  had  hitherto 
produced — a  fact  due,  no  doubt,  partly  to  its  ap- 
pearance in  three  volumes  complete,  instead  of  in 
detached  monthly  portions.  But  its  most  strik- 
ing feature  was  its  elaborate  imitation  of  the  style 
and  even  the  manner  of  thought  of  the  time  of 
Queen  Anne's  reign,  in  which  its  scenes  were 
laid.  The  preparation  of  his  Lectures  on  the 
Humourists  had,  no  doubt,  suggested  to  him  the 
idea  of  writing  a  story  of  this  kind,  as  it  after- 
wards suggested  to  him  the  design  of  writing  a 
history  of  that  period  which  he  had  long  enter- 
tained, but  in  which  he  had,  we  believe,  made  no 
progress  when  he  died.  But  his  fondness  for  the 
Queen  Anne  writers  was  of  older  date.  Affec- 


cmd  the  Man  of  Letters.  139 

tionate  allusions  to  Sir  Richard  Steele — like  him- 
self a  Charterhouse  boy — and  to  Addison,  and 
Pope,  and  Swift,  may  be  found  in  his  earliest 
magazine  articles.  That  the  style  with  which  the 
author  of  "  Yanity  Fair  "  and  "  Pendennis  "  had 
so  often  delighted  his  readers  was  to  some  degree 
formed  upon  those  models  so  little  studied  in  his 
boyhood,  cannot  be  doubted  by  any  one  who  is 
familiar  with  the  literature  of  the  Augustan  age. 
The  writers  of  that  period  were  fond  of  French 
models,  as  the  writers  of  Elizabeth's  time  looked 
to  Italy  for  their  literary  inspiration  ;  but  there 
was  no  time  when  English  prose  was  generally 
written  with  more  purity  and  ease ;  for  the  trans- 
lation of  the  Scriptures,  which  is  generally  referred 
to  as  an  evidence  of  the  perfection  of  our  English 
speech  in  Elizabeth's  time,  owed  its  strength  and 
simplicity  chiefly  to  the  rejection  by  the  pious 
translators  of  the  scholarly  style  most  in  vogue, 
in  favour  of  the  homely  English  then  current 
among  the  people.  If  we  except  the  pamphlet 
writers  of  earlier  reigns,  the  Queen  Anne  writers 
were  the  first  who  systematically  wrote  for  the 
people  in  plain  Saxon  English,  not  easy  to  imitate 


140  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist 

in  these  days.  "  Esmond "  was  from  the  first 
most  liked  among  literary  men  who  can  appreci- 
ate a  style  having  no  resemblance  to  the  fashion 
of  the  day ;  but  there  was  a  vein  of  tenderness 
and  time  pathos  in  the  story  which,  in  spite  of 
some  objectionable  features  in  the  plot,  and  of  a 
somewhat  wearisome  genealogical  introduction, 
have  by  degrees  gained  for  it  a  high  rank  among 
the  author's  works.  "  Esmond  "  was  followed  by 
"  The  Newcomes,"  in  1855,  a  work  which  re- 
vealed a  deeper  pathos  than  any  of  his  previous 
novels,  and  showed  that  the  author  could,  when 
be  pleased,  give  us  pictures  of  moral  beauty  and 
loveliness.  In  this  work  he  returned  to  the  yel- 
low numbers  in  the  old  monthly  form. 

An  incident  in  connection  with  the  publication 
of  "  The  Newcomes "  may  here  be  mentioned. 
Mr.  Thackeray's  fondness  for  irony  had  frequent- 
ly brought  him  into  disgrace  with  people  not  so 
ready  as  himself  for  understanding  that  dangerous 
figure.  A  passage  in  one  of  his  chapters  of  this 
story  alluding  to  "  Mr.  "Washington,"  in  a  parody 
of  the  style  of  the  British  Patriot,  of  the  times  of 
the  War  of  Independence,  was  so  far  misunder- 
stood in  America  that  the  fact  was  alluded  to  by 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  141 

the  N"ew  York  correspondent  of  the  Times.  Upon 
which  Mr.  Thackeray  addressed  the  following  let- 
ter to  that  journal : — 

"  But, — Allow  me  a  word  of  explanation  in  answer  to  a 
strange  charge  which  has  been  brought  against  me  in  the 
United  States,  and  which  your  New  York  correspondent 
has  made  public  in  this  country. 

"  In  the  first  number  of  a  periodical  story  which  I  am 
now  publishing,  appears  a  sentence  in  which  I  should  nev- 
er have  thought  of  finding  any  harm  until  it  has  been  dis- 
covered by  some  critics  over  the  water.  The  fatal  words 
are  these : — 

"  '  When  pigtails  grew  on  the  backs  of  the  British  gen- 
try, and  their  wives  wore  cushions  on  their  heads,  over 
which  they  tied  their  own  hair,  and  disguised  it  with 
powder  and  pomatum ;  when  ministers  went  in  their  stars 
and  orders  to  the  House  of  Commons,  and  the  orators 
of  the  opposition  attacked  nightly  the  noble  lord  in  the 
blue  riband;  when  Mr.  Washington  was  heading  the 
American  rebels  with  a  courage,  it  must  be  confessed, 
worthy  of  a  better  cause, — there  came  to  London,  out  of 
a  northern  county,  Mr.,  etc.' 

"  This  paragraph  has  been  interpreted  in  America 
as  an  insult  to  Washington  and  the  whole  Union ;  and 
from  the  sadness  and  gravity  with  which  your  corre- 
spondent quotes  certain  of  my  words,  it  is  evident  he, 
too,  thinks  they  have  an  insolent  and  malicious 
meaning. 

"Having  published  the  American  critic's  comment, 
permit  the  author  of  a  faulty  sentence  to  say  what  he 
did  mean,  and  to  add  the  obvious  moral  of  the  apologue 


142  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist 


which  has  been  so  oddly  construed.  I  am  speaking  of 
a  young  apprentice  coming  to  London  between  the  years 
1770  and  '80,  and  want  to  depict  a  few  figures  of  the 
last  century.  (The  illustrated  head-letter  of  the  chapter 
was  intended  to  represent  Hogarth's  '  Industriou3 
Apprentice.')  I  fancy  the  old  society,  with  its  hoops 
and  powder — Barr6  or  Fox  thundering  at  Lord  North 
asleep  on  the  Treasury  bench — the  news  readers  at  the 
coffee-room  talking  over  the  paper,  and  owning  that 
this  Mr.  Washington  who  was  leading  the  rebels,  was 
a  very  courageous  soldier,  and  worthy  of  a  better  cause 
than  fighting  against  King  George.  The  images  are 
at  least  natural  and  pretty  consecutive.  1776 — the 
people  of  London  in  '76 — the  Lords  and  House  of  Com- 
mons in  '76— Lord  North— Washington— what  the 
people  thought  about  Washington — I  am  thinking 
about  '76.  Where,  in  the  name  of  common  sense,  is 
the  insult  to  1853?  The  satire,  if  satire  there  be, 
applies  to  us  at  home,  who  called  Washington  '  Mr. 
Washington ; '  as  we  called  Frederick  the  Great  '  the 
Protestant  Hero,'  or  Napoleon  '  The  Corsican  Tyrant,' 
or  'General  Bonaparte.'  Need  I  say,  that  OUT  officers 
were  instructed  (until  they  were  taught  better  manners) 
to  call  Washington  '  Mr.  Washington  ? '  and  that  the 
Americans  were  called  rebels  during  the  whole  of  that 
contest  ?  Rebels  ! — of  course  they  were  rebels ;  and  I 
should  like  to  know  what  native  American  would  not 
have  been  a  rebel  in  that  cause  ? 

"  As  irony  is  dangerous,  and  has  hurt  the  feelings  of 
kind  friends  whom  I  would  not  wish  to  offend,  let  me  say, 
in  perfect  faith  and  gravity,  that  I  think  the  cause  for 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  143 

which  "Washington  fought  entirely  just  and  right,  and  the 
champion  the  very  noblest,  purest,  bravest,  best  of  God's 
men. 

"  I  am,  Sir,  your  very  faithful  servant, 

"  W.  M.  THACKEBAY. 
"  Athenaeum,  Nov.  22." 

Another  journey  to  the  United  States,  equally 
successful,  and  equally  profitable  in  a  pecuniary 
sense,  was  the  chief  event  in  his  life  in  1856. 
The  lectures  delivered  were  those  beautiful  anec- 
dotical  and  reflective  discourses  on  the  "Four 
Georges,"  made  familiar  to  readers  by  their  pub- 
lication in  the  "  Cornhill  Magazine,"  and  since 
then,  in  a  separate  form.  The  subject  was  not 
favourable  to  the  display  of  the  author's  more 
genial  qualities.  Yery  little  that  is  good  could 
be  said  of  the  Georges.  Yet,  where  in  English 
literature  could  we  find  anything  more  solemn 
and  affecting  than  his  picture  of  the  old  King, 
the  last  of  that  name  ?  When  "  all  light,  all  rea- 
son, all  sound  of  human  voices,  all  the  pleasures 
of  this  world  of  God  were  taken  from  him."  Con- 
cluding with  the  affecting  appeal  to  his  American 
audience—"  O  brothers  !  speaking  the  same  dear 
mother  tongue — O  comrades !  enemies  no  more, 


144  Thackeray  /  the  Humourist 


let  us  take  a  mournful  hand  together  as  we  stand 
by  this  royal  corpse,  and  call  a  truce  to  battle ! 
Low  he  lies  to  whom  the  proudest  used  to  kneel 
once,  and  who  was  cast  lower  than  the  poorest — 
dead  whom  millions  prayed  for  in  vain.  Hush, 
Strife  and  Quarrels  over  the  solemn  grave ! 
Sound  Trumpets,  a  mournful  march.  Fall,  Dark 
Curtain,  upon  his  pageant,  his  pride,  his  grief,  his 
awful  tragedy !  " 

These  lectures  were  successfully  repeated  in 
England.  Mr.  Thackeray,  indeed,  was  now  rec- 
ognized as  one  of  the  most  attractive  lecturers  of 
the  day.  His  appearance,  whether  in  lecturing  on 
the  "  Georges  "  for  his  own  profit,  or  on  "  Week- 
day Preachers,"  or  some  other  topic  for  the  bene- 
fit of  the  families  of  deceased  brother  writers,  such 
as  the  late  Mr.  Angus  B.  Reach  and  Mr.  Douglas 
Jerrold,  always  attracted  the  most  cultivated 
classes  of  the  various  cities*  in  which  he  appeared ; 
but  an  attempt  to  draw  together  a  large  audience 
of  the  less  educated  classes  by  giving  a  course  of 
lectures  at  the  great  Music  Hall,  was  less  happy. 
In  Edinburgh,  his  reception  was  always  in  the 
highest  degree  successful.  He  was  more  exten- 


and  ilie  Mem  of  Letters.  145 

sively  known  and  admired  among  the  intellectual 
portion  of  the  people  of  Scotland  than  any  living 
writer,  not  excepting  Mr.  Thomas  Carlyle.  There 
was  something  in  his  peculiar  genius  that  com- 
mended him  to  the  Northern  temperament.  About 
seven  years  before  Thackeray  was  delivering  his 
lectures  on  the  "  Four  Georges  "  in  Scotland,  to 
larger  and  more  intellectual  audiences  than  ever 
listened  to  any  other  lecturer,  and  he  lectured 
there  since  for  the  benefit  of  Mr.  Angus  B. 
Reach's  widow.  Nearly  all  the  men  of  Edin- 
burgh, with  any  tincture  of  literature,  had  met 
him  personally,  and  a  few  knew  him  well.  He 
was  almost  the  only  great  author  that  the  major- 
ity of  the  lovers  of  literature  in  it  had  seen  and 
heard,  and  his  form  and  figure  and  voice,  with 
its  tragic  tones  and  pauses,  well  entitled  him  to 
take  his  place  in  any  ideal  rank  of  giants.  He 
was  much  gratified  (says  Mr.  Hannay)  by  the  suc- 
cess of  the  "  Four  Georges," — (a  series  which  su- 
perseded an  earlier  scheme  for  as  many  discourses 
on  "Men  of  the  World,")— in  Scotland.  "I 
have  had  three  per  cent,  of  the  whole  population 
here  ;  "  he  wrote  from  Edinburgh  in  November, 
7 


146  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist 

1856, — "  If  I  could  but  get  three  per  cent,  out  of 
London  !  " 

Most  of  Mr.  Thackeray's  readers  will  remem- 
ber, that  in  1857,  he  was  invited  by  some  friends 
to  offer  himself  as  a  candidate  for  the  representa- 
tion in  Parliament  of  the  City  of  Oxford.  Mr. 
Hannay,  in  his  graceful  and  affectionate  memoir 
of  Thackeray,  published  in  the  Edinburgh  Cou- 
rant,  tells  his  readers,  with  a  national  zeal  for  his 
party,  that  the  radicals  hated  Mr.  Thackeray  as 
the  associate  of  aristocratic  personages.  But  the 
radical  party  had  no  ground  for  such  a  feeling. 
From  his  earliest  life  he  had  professed  strong  lib- 
eral views ;  and  he  maintained  them  to  the  last. 
An  accident  brought  him  into  connexion  with  the 
scurrilous  Tory  writers  who  formed  the  staff  of 
"  Eraser,"  but  his  own  papers  in  that  magazine 
had  nothing  to  do  with  politics ;  and  no  hints 
will  be  found  in  them  of  sympathy  with  the  po- 
litical views  of  his  associates.  In  1836,  when 
writing  for  the  Constitutional,  he  wrote  strongly 
in  favour  of  advanced  liberal  views.  In  1857", 
when  a  prosperous  man,  he  contested  the  vacant 
borough  of  Oxford  against  the  Government  can- 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  147 

didate,  as  an  advocate  of  the  Ballot — a  fact  which 
brought  down  upon  him  still  more  strongly  the 
ready  pens  who  write  under  Government  inspira- 
tion in  the  Times.  But  the  following  papers 
from  his  Address  to  the  Electors  of  Oxford,  will 
best  show  his  views  on  politics  at  this  time. 

"  GENTLEMEN, — I  should  be  unworthy  of  the  great 
kindness  and  cordiality  with  which  you  have  received 
me  to-night,  were  I  to  hesitate  to  put  your  friendship  to 
the  test  and  ask  you  to  confirm  it  at  the  poll. 

*  *  •  *  *  *  * 

"  I  would  use  my  best  endeavours  not  merely  to 
enlarge  the  constituencies,  but  to  popularize  the  Gov- 
ernment of  this  country.  With  no  feeling  but  that 
of  good-will  towards  those  leading  aristocratic  families, 
who  are  administering  the  chief  offices  of  the  State,  I 
believe  that  it  could  be  benefited  by  the  skill  and  talents 
of  persons  less  aristocratic,  and  that  the  country  thinks  so 
likewise. 

"I  think  that  to  secure  the  due  freedom  of  repre- 
sentation, and  to  defend  the  poor  voter  from  the  chance 
of  intimidation,  the  ballot  is  the  best  safeguard  we 
know  of,  and  would  vote  most  hopefully  for  that  mea- 
sure. I  would  have  the  suffrage  amended  in  nature, 
as  well  as  in  numbers ;  and  hope  to  see  many  educated 
classes  represented  who  have  now  no  voice  in  elec- 
tions. 

****** 

"  The  usefulness  of  a  Member  of  Parliament  is  best 


148  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist 


tested  at  home ;  and  should  you  think  fit  to  elect  me  as 
your  representative,  I  promise  to  use  my  utmost  endeavour 
to  increase  and  advance  the  social  happiness,  the  knowl- 
edge, and  the  power  of  the  people. 

"  W.  M.  THACKEKAY. 
"  Mitre,  July  9,  1857." 

At  the  hustings  he  spoke  as  follows  : — 

"  As  I  came  down  to  this  place,  I  saw  on  each  side 
of  me  placards  announcing  that  there  was  no  manner 
of  doubt  that  on  Tuesday  the  friends  of  the  Right  Hon. 
Edward  Cardwell  would  elect  him  to  a  seat  in  Parlia- 
ment. I  also  saw  other  placards  announcing  in  similar 
terms  a  confidence  that  there  was  no  doubt  that  I 
should  be  elected  to  a  seat  in  Parliament  for  the  City 
of  Oxford.  Now  as  both  sides  are  perfectly  confident 
of  success — as  I  for  my  part,  feel  perfectly  confident, 
and  as  my  opponents  entertain  the  same  favourable 
opinion  in  regard  to  themselves — surely  both  sides  may 
meet  here  in  perfect  good-humour.  I  hear  that  not 
long  since — in  the  memory  of  many  now  alive — this 
independent  city  was  patronized  by  a  great  university, 
and  that  a  great  duke,  who  lived  not  very  far  from 
here,  at  the  time  of  election  used  to  put  on  his  boots 
and  ride  down  and  order  the  freemen  of  Oxford  to 
elect  a  member  for  him.  Any  man  who  has  wandered 
through  your  beautiful  city  as  I  have  done  within 
these  last  few  days  cannot  but  be  struck  witlfc  the  dif- 
ference between  the  ancient  splendour,  the  academic 
grandeur  that  prevailed  in  this  place — the  processions 
of  dons,  doctors,  and  proctors — and  your  new  city, 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  149 

which  is  not  picturesque  or  beautiful  at  all,  but  which 
contains  a  number  of  streets,  peopled  by  thousands 
of  hard-working,  honest,  rough-handed  men.  These 
men  have  grown  up  of  late  years,  and  have  asserted 
their  determination  to  have  a  representative  of  their 
own.  Such  a  representative  they  found  three  months 
ago,  and  such  a  representative  they  returned  to  Par- 
liament in  the  person  of  my  friend,  Mr.  Neate.*  But 
such  a  representative  was  turned  out  of  that  Parlia- 
ment by  a  sentence  which  I  cannot  call  unjust,  be- 
cause he  himself  is  too  magnanimous  and  generous 
to  say  so,  but  which  I  will  call  iniquitous.  He  was 
found  guilty  of  a  twopennyworth  of  bribery  which  he 
never  committed ;  and  a  Parliament  which  has  swal- 
lowed so  many  camels,  strained  at  that  little  gnat,  and 
my  friend,  your  representative,  the  very  best  man  you 
could  find  to  represent  you  was  turned  back,  and  you 
were  left  without  a  man.  I  cannot  hope — I  never 
thought  to  equal  him ;  I  only  came  forward  at  a 
moment  when  I  felt  it  necessary  that  some  one  pro- 
fessing his  principles,  and  possessing  your  confidence, 
should  be  ready  to  step  into  the  gap  which  he  had 
made.  I  know  that  the  place  was  very  eagerly  sought 
for  by  other  folks  on  the  other  side,  entertaining  other 
opinions.  Perhaps  you  don't  know  that  last  week  there 
was  a  Tory  baronet  down  here,  walking  about  in  the 
shade,  as  umbrageous  almost  as  that  under  which 
my  opponent,  Mr.  Cardwell,  has  sheltered  himself. 

*  Mr.  Neate  was  then  Professor  of  Political  Economy  in 
the  University. 


150  Thackeray  •  the  Humourist 


Of  course  you  know  there  came  down  a  ministerial 
nominee — Lord  Monck ;  but  you  do  not  know  that 
Mr.  Hayter,  who  is  what  is  called  the  Whipper-in  for 
the  Ministerial  party,  came  down  here  also  on  Saturday 
week  in  a  dark  and  mysterious  manner,  and  that  some 
conversation  took  place,  the  nature  of  which  I  cannot 
pretend  to  know  anything  about,  because  I  have  no  spies, 
however  people  may  be  lurking  at  the  doors  of  our 
committee-room.  But  the  result  of  all  was,  that  Lord 
Monck  disappeared,  and  Mr.  Hayter  vanished  into 
darkness  and  became  a  myth ;  and  we  were  informed 
that  a  powerful  requisition  from  the  City  of  Oxford 
had  invited  Mr.  Cardwell.  Mind,  Mr.  Cardwell  has 
given  no  note  in  reply — no  mark,  no  sign.  We  do 
not  know,  even  now,  whether  he  accepted  that  polite 
invitation ;  we  do  not  know  it  even  to  this  day,  except 
that  his  godfathers  have  been  here  and  have  said  so. 
After  the  manner  in  which  the  electors  of  Oxford  have 
received  me,  could  I  possibly  have  gone  back  simply 
because  we  are  told  that  Mr.  Cardwell  had  received  an 
invitation,  which  we  did  not  know  whether  he  had 
accepted  or  not  ?  I  feel  it,  therefore,  to  be  my  humble 
duty  to  stand  in  the  place  where  I  found  myself,  I 
do  not  know  that  I  would  have  ventured  to  oppose 
Mr.  Cardwell  under  other  circumstances.  I  am  fully 
aware  of  his  talents.  I  know  his  ability  as  a  states- 
man, and  no  man  can  say  that  I  have,  during  the  whole 
of  my  canvass,  uttered  a  word  at  all  unfriendly  or  dis- 
respectful towards  that  gentleman.  I  should  have 
hesitated  on  any  other  occasion  in  opposing  him,  but 
I  cannot  hesitate  now,  because  I  know  that  we  have 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  151 


the  better  cause,  and  that  we  mean  to  make  that  better 
cause  triumphant. 

****** 

I  say  they  have,  and  that  any  man  who  belongs  to  the 
Peelite  party  is  not  the  man  who  ought  to  be  put  for- 
ward by  any  constituency  at  the  eve  of  a  great  and 
momentous  English  war.  As  to  my  own  opinions  on 
public  questions,  you  may  have  heard  them  pretty  freely 
expressed  on  many  occasions.  I  only  hope  if  you  elect 
me  to  Parliament,  I  shall  be  able  to  obviate  the  little 
difficulty  which  has  been  placarded  against  me  —  that 
I  could  not  speak.  I  own  I  cannot  speak  very  well, 
but  I  shall  learn.  I  cannot  spin  out  glibe  sentences  by 
the  yard,  as  some  people  can  ;  but  if  I  have  got  any- 
thing in  my  mind,  if  I  feel  strongly  on  any  question,  I 
have  I  believe  got  brains  enough  to  express  it.  When 
you  send  a  man  to  the  House  of  Commons,  you  do  not 
want  him  to  be  always  talking  ;  he  goes  there  to  con- 
duct the  business  of  the  country  ;  he  has  to  prepare 
himself  on  the  question  on  which  he  proposes  to  speak 
before  six  hundred  and  fifty-six  members,  who  would 
.be  bored  if  every  man  were  to  deliver  his  opinion.  He 
must  feel  and  understand  what  he  is  going  to  say,  and 
I  have  not  the  least  doubt  that  I  shall  be  able  to  say 
what  I  feel  and  think,  if  you  will  give  me  the  chance 
of  saying  it.  If  any  one  in  the  House  of  Commons 
talked  all  he  thought  upon  everything,  good  God  !  what 
a  Babel  it  would  be  !  You  would  not  get  on  at  all. 
On  the  first  night  I  came  among  you,  many  questions 
were  put  to  me  by  a  friend,  who  capped  them  all  by 
eaying,  'Now,  Mr.  Thackeray,  are  you  for  the  honour 


152  Thackeray  /  the  Humourist 

of  England?'  I  said  that  that  was  rather  a  wild  and 
a  wide  question  to  put,  but  to  the  best  of  my  belief  I 
was  for  the  honour  of  England,  and  would  work  for  it 
to  the  best  of  my  power.  About  the  ballot  we  are  all 
agreed.  If  I  was  for  the  ballot  before  I  came  down 
here,  I  am  more  for  the  ballot  now.  As  to  triennial 
Parliaments,  if  the  constituents  desire  them,  I  am  for 
them." 

A  voice  here  inquired  if  Mr.  Thackeray  "  would 
have  the  ballot  to-morrow  ? "  and  he  continued — 

"  No,  we  are  too  manly,  too  plucky,  too  honest,  and 
we  will  beat  them  without  it ;  but  another  day,  when 
we  have  a  better  representation,  we  will  have  the 
ballot.  If  you  elect  me,  I  shall  not  go  to  the  House 
of  Commons  hostile  to  the  present  Ministry,  but  deter- 
mined to  keep  them  to  their  work,  and  to  prevent  them 
from  shrinking  from  any  of  the  promises  they  have 
made.  I  think  them  in  a  war  crisis  eminently  the  best 
men  to  carry  on  the  councils  of  the  country,  and  to 
contend  against  the  Tories  and  Peelites,  who  have  very 
nearly  paralyzed  their  arms." 

The  official  declaration  showed  that  the  popular 
novelist  was  beaten  by  so  narrow  a  majority  in  a 
contest  with  an  opponent  backed  by  the  powerful 
support  of  the  Government,  as  to  afford  abundant 
evidence  of  the  favour  of  the  electors.  The  result 
was  declared  on  the  21st  July,  by  the  Mayor,  at 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  153 

six  o'clock,  and  the  yard  attached  to  the  Townhall 
was  as  fully  crowded  as  it  had  been  on  the  pre- 
vious morning.  The  announcement  was  received 
with  a  mixture  of  cheers  and  hisses  ;  but  on  Mr. 
Thackeray  coming  forward  to  address  the  meet- 
ing, he  was  welcomed  with  loud  and  prolonged 
cheering.  He  said — 

"  Give  me  leave  to  speak  a  few  words  to  you  on  this 
occasion,  for  although  the  red,  white  and  blue  are  my 
friends,  I  hope  to  make  the  green  and  yellow  my 
friends  also.  Let  me  tell  you  a  little  story,  but  a  true 
one.  Some  years  ago,  when  boxing  was  more  common 
in  this  country  than  it  is  at  the  present  time,  two 
celebrated  champions  met  to  fight  a  battle  on  Moulsey 
Heath.  Their  names  were  Gully  and  Gregson.  They 
fought  the  most  tremendous  battle  that  had  been  known 
for  many  long  years,  and  Gregson  got  the  worst  of  it. 
As  he  was  lying  on  his  bed  some  time  afterwards, 
blinded  and  his  eyes  closed  up,  he  asked  a  friend  to 
give  him  something  to  drink.  A  person  in  the  room 
handed  him  some  drink  and  grasped  him  by  the  hand. 
'Whose  hand  is  this?'  asked  Gregson.  "Tis  Jack 
Gully's,'  was  the  reply.  Now  Gregson  was  the  man 
who  was  beaten  and  Gully  was  the  conqueror,  and  he 
was  the  first  man  to  shake  him  by  the  hand,  to  show 
him  that  he  had  no  animosity  against  him.  This 
should  be  the  conduct  of  all  loyal  Englishmen,  to  fight 
a  good  fight,  and  to  hold  no  animosity  against  the 

7* 


154  Thackeray  /  the  Humourist 

opposite  side.  With,  this  feeling  I  go  away  from  Oxford. 
With  this  feeling  I  shall  have  redeemed  one  of  the 
promises  I  made  you  yesterday ;  the  other  I  cannot 
by  any  possibility  answer,  because,  somehow  or  other, 
our  side  has  come  out  a  little  below  the  other  side.  I 
wish  to  shake  Mr.  Cardwell  by  the  hand,  and  to  con- 
gratulate him  on  being  the  representative  of  this  great 
city.  I  say  it  is  a  victory  you  ought  to  be  proud  of; 
it  is  a  battle  which  you  ought  to  be  proud  of  who 
have  taken  part  in  it ;  you  have  done  your  duty  nobly 
and  fought  most  gallantly.  I  am  a  man  who  was 
unknown  to  most  of  you,  who  only  came  before  you 
with  the  recommendation  of  my  noble  and  excellent 
friend  Mr.  Neate,  but  I  have  met  with  many  friends. 
You  have  fought  the  battle  gallantly  against  great  in- 
fluences, against  an  immense  strength  which,  have  been 
brought  against  you,  and  in  favour  of  that  honoured 
and  respected  man  Mr.  Cardwell." 

Some  hisses  having  greeted  this  remark,  Mr. 
Thackeray  exclaimed — 

.  "  Stop,  don't  hiss.  When  Lord  Monck  came  down 
here  and  addressed  the  electors,  he  was  good  enough 
to  say  a  kind  word  in  favour  of  me.  Now,  that  being 
the  case,  don't  let  me  be  outdone  in  courtesy  and 
generosity,  but  allow  me  to  say  a  few  words  of  the 
respect  and  cordiality  which  I  entertain  for  Mr.  Card- 
well.  As  for  the  party  battle  which  divides  you,  I 
am,  gentlemen,  a  stranger,  for  I  never  heard  the  name 
of  certain  tradesmen  of  this  city  till  I  came  among  you. 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  155 


Perhaps  I  thought  my  name  was  better  known  than  it 
is.  You,  the  electors  of  Oxford,  know  whether  I  have 
acted  honestly  towards  you ;  and  you  on  the  other  side 
will  say  whether  I  ever  solicited  a  vote  when  I  knew 
that  vote  was  promised  to  my  opponent;  or  whether 
I  have  not  always  said — '  Sir,  keep  your  word ;  here  is 
my  hand  on  it,  let  us  part  good  friends.'  With  my 
opponents  I  part  so.  With  others,  my  friends,  I  part 
with  feelings  still  more  friendly,  not  only  for  the 
fidelity  you  have  shown  towards  me,  but  for  your  noble 
attachment  to  the  gallant  and  tried  whom  you  did 
know,  and  who  I  hope  will  be  your  representative  at  some 
future  time." 

In  answer  to  a  cry  of  "  Bribery,"  he  con- 
tinued— 

"  Don't  cry  out  bribery ;  if  you  know  of  it,  prove  it ; 
but  as.  I  am  innocent  of  bribery  myself,  I  do  not  choose 
to  fancy  that  other  men  are  not  equally  loyal  and 
honest.  It  matters  very  little  whether  I  am  in  the 
House  of  Commons  or  not,  to  prate  a  little  more ;  but 
you  have  shown  a  great  spirit,  a  great  resolution,  and 
great  independence ;  and  I  trust  at  some  future  day, 
when  you  know  me  better  than  you  do  now,  you  will 
be  able  to  carry  your  cause  to  a  more  successful  issue. 
Before  I  came  to  Oxford,  I  knew  that  there  was  a  cer- 
tain question  that  would  go  against  me,  and  which  I 
would  not  blink  to  be  made  a  duke  or  a  marquis  to- 
morrow. In  March  last,  when  I  was  at  a  dinner  at 
Edinburgh,  some  friend  of  mine  asked  me  to  stand  for 
the  representation  of  their  city.  My  answer  was  this 


156  Thackeray  /  the  Humowrist 

— '  That  I  was  for  having  the  people  amused  after  they 
had  done  their  worship  on  a  Sunday.'  I  knew  that  I 
was  speaking  to  a  people  who,  of  all  others,  were  the 
most  open  to  scruples  on  that  point,  but  I  did  my  duty 
as  an  honest  man,  and  stated  what  my  opinion  was. 
I  have  done  my  duty  honestly  to  this  city,  and  I 
believe  that  this  is  the  reason  why  I  am  placed  in  a 
minority ;  but  I  am  contented  to  bow  to  that  decision. 
I  told  you  that  I  was  for  allowing  a  man  to  have  harm- 
less pleasures  when  he  had  done  his  worship  on  Sundays. 
I  expected  to  have  a  hiss,  but  they  have  taken  a  more 
dangerous  shape— the  shape  of  slander.  Those  gentle- 
men who  will  take  the  trouble  to  read  my  books — and 
I  should  be  glad  to  have  as  many  of  you  for  subscribers 
as  will  come  forward — will  be  able  to  say  whether  there 
is  anything  in  them  that  should  not  be  read  by  any 
one's  children,  or  by  my  own,  or  by  any  Christian  man. 
I  say,  on  this  ground  I  will  retire,  and  take  my  place 
with  my  pen  and  ink  at  my  desk,  and  leave  to  Mr.  Card- 
well  a  business  which  I  am  sure  he  understands  better 
than  I  do." 

A  characteristic  anecdote  has  recently  been 
told  in  the  newspapers  relating  to  the  Oxford 
election  by  one  who  was  staying  with  Thackeray 
at  his  hotel  during  his  contest  with  Mr.  Cardwell. 
Whilst  looking  out  a  window  a  crowd  passed 
along  the  street,  hooting  and  handling  rather 
roughly  some  of  Mr.  Cardwell's  supporters.  Mr. 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  157 

Thackeray  started  up  in  the  greatest  possible  ex- 
citement, and  using  some  strong  expletive,  bolted 
down  stairs,  and  notwithstanding  the  efforts  of 
some  old  electioneers  to  detain  him,  who  happened 
to  be  of  .opinion  that  a  trifling  correction  of  the 
opposite  party  might  be  beneficial  pour  encourager 
les  autres,  he  was  not  to  be  deterred,  and  was 
next  seen  towering  above  the  crowd,  dealing  about 
him  right  and  left,  in  defence  of  his  opponent's 
partisans,  and  in  defiance  of  his  own  friends. 

The  year  1858  was  marked  by  an  unfortunate 
episode  the  facts  of  which  cannot  be  omitted  from 
this  narrative,  because  though  trifling  in  their 
origin,  they  finally  led  to  a  temporary  estrange- 
ment between  Mr.  Thackeray  and  his  great 
brother  novelist,  Mr.  Dickens,  with  whom  he  had 
hitherto  had  only  relations  of  the  most  friendly 
character.  On  the  12th  of  June  in  that  year  an 
article  had  appeared  in  a  periodical  called  "  Town 
Talk,"  which  professed  to  give  an  account  of 
Mr.  Thackeray — his  appearance,  his  career,  and 
his  success.  The  article  was  coarse  and  offensive 
in  tone  ;  but  it  was  notorious  that  the  periodical 
was  edited  by  a  clever  writer  of  the  day,  well- 


158  Thackeray  y  the  Humourist 

known  to  Mr.  Thackeray,  as  a  brother  member 
of  a  club  to  which  he  belonged.  As  such,  the 
subject  of  the  attack  felt  himself  compelled  to 
take  notice  of  it.  In  order  to  understand  the 
anger  displayed  by  the  latter  at  this  unprovoked 
attack,  it  is  necessary  to  quote  the  following  pas- 
sage from  the  article : — 

"HIS  APPEARANCE. 

"Mr.  Thackeray  is  forty-six  years  old,  though  from 
the  silvery  whiteness  of  his  hair  he  appears  somewhat 
older.  He  is  very  tall,  standing  upwards  of  six  feet 
two  inches ;  and  as  he  walks  erect,  his  height  makes 
him  conspicuous  in  every  assembly.  His  face  is  blood- 
less, and  not  particularly  expressive,  but  remarkable  for 
the  fracture  of  the  bridge  of  the  nose,  the  result  of  an 
accident  in  youth.  He  wears  a  small  grey  whisker, 
but  otherwise  is  clean  shaven.  No  one  meeting  him 
could  fail  to  recognize  in  him  a  gentleman :  his  bearing 
is  cold  and  uninviting,  his  style  of  conversation  either 
openly  cynical  or  affectedly  good-natured  and  benevo- 
lent ;  his  bonhommie  is  forced,  his  wit  biting,  his  pride 
easily  touched — but  his  appearance  is  invariably  that 
of  the  cool,  suave,  well-bred  gentleman,  who,  whatever 
may  be  rankling  within,  suffers  no  surface  display  of  his 
emotion. 

"  HIS  SUCCESS, 

"  Commencing  with  '  Vanity  Fair,'  culminated  with 
his    '  Lectures    on    the    English    Humourists    of    the 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  159 


Eighteenth  Century,1  which  were  attended  by  all  the 
court  and  fashion  of  London.  The  prices  were  extrav- 
agant, the  Lecturer's  adulation  of  birth  and  position 
was  extravagant,  the  success  was  extravagant.  No  one 
succeeds  better  than  Mr.  Thackeray  in  cutting  his  coat 
according  to  his  cloth :  here  he  flattered  the  aristoc- 
racy, but  when  he  crossed  the  Atlantic,  George  Wash- 
ington became  the  idol  of  his  worship,  the  '  Four 
Georges'  the  objects  of  his  bitterest  attacks.  These 
last-named  Lectures  have  been  dead  failures  in  Eng- 
land, though  as  literary  compositions  they  are  most 
excellent.  Our  own  opinion  is,  that  his  success  is  on 
the  wane ;  his  writings  never  were  understood  or  ap- 
preciated even  by  the  middle  classes;  the  aristocracy 
have  been  alienated  by  his  American  onslaught  on  their 
body,  and  the  educated  and  refined  are  not  sufficiently 
numerous  to  constitute  an  audience ;  moreover,  there 
is  a  want  of  heart  in  all  he  writes,  which  is  not  to  be 
balanced  by  the  most  brilliant  sarcasm  and  the  most 
perfect  knowledge  of  the  workings  of  the  human 
heart." 

Two  days  later  Mr.  Thackeray  addressed  the 
assumed  writer  of  this  article,  in  the  following 
letter : 

"  36  Onslow-square,  S.  W.,  June  14. 

"  SIR, — I  have  received  two  numbers  of  a  little  paper 
called  'Town  Talk,'  containing  notices  respecting  my- 
self, of  which,  as  I  learn  from  the  best  authority,  you  are 
the  writer. 

"  In  the  first  article  of '  Literary  Talk '  you  think  fit 


160  Thackeray  /  the  Humourist 


to  publish  an  incorrect  account  of  my  private  dealings 
with  my  publishers. 

"  In  this  week's  number  appears  a  so-called  '  Sketch,' 
containing  a  description  of  my  manners,  person,  and 
conversation,  and  an  account  of  my  literary  works,  which 
of  course  you  are  at  liberty  to  praise  or  condemn  as  a 
literary  critic. 

"  But  you  state,  with  regard  to  my  conversation,  that 
it  is  either  '  frankly  cynical  or  affectedly  benevolent  and 
good-natured ; '  and  of  my  works  (Lectures),  that  in  some 
I  showed  '  an  extravagant  adulation  of  rank  and  position,' 
which  in  other  lectures  ('  as  I  know  how  to  cut  my  coat 
according  to  my  cloth ')  became  the  object  of  my  bit- 
terest attack. 

"As  I  understand  your  phrases,  you  impute  insin- 
cerity to  me  when  I  speak -good-naturedly  in  private; 
assign  dishonorable  motives  to  me  for  sentiments 
which  I  have  delivered  in  public,  and  charge  me  with 
advancing  statements  which  I  have  never  delivered 
at  all. 

"  Had  your  remarks  been  written  by  a  person  un- 
known to  me,  I  should  have  noticed  them  no  more  than 
other  calumnies ;  but  as  we  have  shaken  hands  more  than 
once,  and  met  hitherto  on  friendly  terms  (you  may  ask 

one  of  your  employers,  Mr. ,  of ,  whether  I  did 

not  speak  of  you  very  lately  in  the  most  friendly  manner), 
I  am  obliged  to  take  notice  of  articles  which  I  consider 
to  be  not  offensive  and  unfriendly  merely,  but  slanderous 
and  untrue. 

'  "We  met  at  a  Club,  where,  before  you  were  born, 
I  believe,  I  and  other  gentlemen  have  been  in  the  habit 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  161 

of  talking  without  any  idea  that  our  conversation  would 
supply  paragraphs  for  professional  vendors  of  '  Literary 
Talk ; '  and  I  don't  remember  that  out  of  that  Club  I 
have  ever  exchanged  six  words  with  you.  Allow  me  to 
inform  you  that  the  talk  which  you  have  heard  there 
is  not  intended  for  newspaper  remarks ;  and  to  beg — 
as  I  have  a  right  to  do — that  you  will  refrain  from 
printing  comments  upon  my  private  conversations; 
that  you  will  forego  discussions,  however  blundering, 
upon  my  private  affairs ;  and  that  you  will  henceforth 
please  to  consider  any  question  of  my  personal  truth 
and  sincerity  as  quite  out  of  the  province  of  your 

criticism.    I  am,  &c. 

"  W.  M.  THACKERAY." 

Subsequently  Mr.  Thackeray  "  rather  (he  said) 
than  have  any  further  correspondence  with  the 
writer  of  the  character,"  determined  to  submit  the 
letters  which  had  passed  between  them  to  the 
Committee  of  the  Club,  for  that  body  to  decide 
whether  the  practice  of  publishing  such  articles 
would  not  be  "  fatal  to  the  comfort  of  the  Club," 
and  "  intolerable  in  a  society  of  gentlemen." 
The  Committee  accordingly  met,  and  decided  that 
the  writer  of  the  attack  complained  of  was  bound 
to  make  an  ample  apology,  or  to  retire  from  the 
Club.  The  latter  contested  the  right  of  the 
Committee  to  interfere.  Suits  at  law  and  pro- 


162  Thackeray  /  the  Humourist 

ceedings  in  Chancery  against  the  committee,  were 
threatened ;  when  Mr.  Dickens,  who  was  also  a 
member  of  the  Club,  interfered  with  the  following 
letter : — 

"  Tavistock  House,  Tavistock-square,  London,  W.  C. 
"  Wednesday,  24th  November,  1858. 

"Mr  DEAR  THACKERAY, — Without  a  word  of  pre- 
lude, I  wish  this  note  to  revert  to  a  subject  on  which 
I  said  six  words  to  you  at  the  Athenseum  when  I  last 
saw  you. 

"  Coming  home  from  my  country  work,  I  find  Mr. 
Edwin  James's  opinion  taken  on  this  painful  question 
of  the  Garrick  and  Mr.  Edmund  Yates.  I  find  it  strong 
on  the  illegality  of  the  Garrick  proceeding.  Not  to  com- 
plicate this  note  or  give  it  a  formal  appearance,  I  forbear 
from  copying  the  opinion ;  but  I  have  asked  to  see  it,  and 
I  have  it,  and  I  want  to  make  no  secret  from  you  of  a 
word  of  it. 

"  I  find  Mr.  Edwin  James  retained  on  the  one  side ; 
I  hear  and  read  of  the  Attorney-General  being  retained 
on  the  other.  Let  me,  in  this  state  of  things,  ask  you  a 
plain  question. 

"  Can  any  conference  be  held  between  me,  as  repre- 
senting Mr.  Yates,  and  an  appointed  friend  of  yours,  as 
representing  you,  with  the  hope  and  purpose  of  some  quiet 
accommodation  of  this  deplorable  matter,  which  will 
satisfy  the  feelings  of  all  concerned  ? 

"  It  is  right  that,  in  putting  this  to  you,  I  should 
tell  you  that  Mr.  Yates,  when  you  first  wrote  to  him, 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  163 


brought  your  letter  to  me.  He  had  recently  done  me 
a  manly  service  I  can  never  forget,  in  some  private 
distress  of  mine  (generally  within  your  knowledge), 
and  he  naturally  thought  of  me  as  his  friend  in  an 
emergency.  I  told  him  that  his  article  was  not  to  be 
defended ;  but  I  confirmed  him  in  his  opinion  that  it 
was  not  reasonably  possible  for  him  set  to  right  what 
was  amiss,  on  the  receipt  of  a  letter  couched  in  the 
very  strong  terms  you  had  employed.  When  you 
appealed  to  the  Garrick  Committee,  and  they  called 
their  General  Meeting,  I  said  at  that  meeting  that  you 
and  I  had  been  on  good  terms  for  many  years,  and 
that  I  was  very  sorry  to  find  myself  opposed  to  you; 
but  that  I  was  clear  that  the  Committee  had  nothing 
on  earth  to  do  with  it,  and  that  in  the  strength  of  my 
conviction  I  should  go  against  them. 

"  If  this  mediation  that  I  have  suggested  can  take 
place,  I  shall  be  heartily  glad  to  do  my  best  in  it — and 
God  knows  in  no  hostile  spirit  towards  any  one,  least  of 
all  to  you.  If  it  cannot  take  place,  the  thing  is  at  least 
no  worse  than  it  was  ;  and  you  will  burn  this  letter,  and 
I  will  burn  your  answer. 

"  Yours  faithfully, 

"  CHARLES  DICKENS. 
"  W.  M.  Thackeray,  Esq." 

To  this  Mr.  Thackeray  replied  : — 

"  36,  Onslow-square,  26th  November,  1858. 
"DEAR   DICKENS, — I   grieve    to   gather   from   your 
letter  that  you  were  Mr.  Yates's  adviser  in  the  dispute 
between  me  and  him.     His  letter  was  the  cause  of  my 


164  Thackeray  ;  the  Hum&wrist 


appeal  to  the  Garrick  Club  for  protection  from  insults 
against  which  I  had  no  other  remedy. 

"  I  placed  my  grievance  before  the  Committee  of 
the  Club  as  the  only  place  where  I  have  been  accus- 
tomed to  meet  Mr.  Yates.  They  gave  their  opinion 
of  his  conduct  and  of  the  reparation  which  lay  in  his 
power.  Not  satisfied  with  their  sentence,  Mr.  Yates 
called  for  a  General  Meeting ;  and,  the  meeting  which 
he  had  called  having  declared  against  him,  he  declines 
the  jurisdiction  which  he  had  asked  for,  and  says  he 
will  have  recourse  to  lawyers. 

"You  say  that  Mr.  Edwin  James  is  strongly  of 
opinion  that  the  conduct  of  the  Club  is  illegal.  On 
this  point  I  can  give  no  sort  of  judgment :  nor  can  I 
conceive  that  the  Club  will  be  frightened,  by  the 
opinion  of  any  lawyer,  out  of  their  own  sense  of  the 
justice  and  honour  which  ought  to  obtain  among 
gentlemen. 

"Ever  since  I  submitted  my  case  to  the  Club,  I 
have  had,  and  can  have,  no  part  in  the  dispute.  It  is 
for  them  to  judge  if  any  reconcilement  is  possible  with 
your  friend.  I  subjoin  the  copy  of  a  letter  which  I 
wrote  to  the  Committee,  and  refer  you  to  them  for  the 

issue. 

"  Yours,  &c., 

"  W.  M.  THACKERAY. 
"  C.  Dickens,  Esq." 

The  enclosure  referred  to  was  as  follows  : — 

"  Onslow-square,  Nov.  28,  1858. 
"  GENTLEMEK, — I  have  this  day  received  a  commu- 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  165 

nication  from  Mr.  Charles  Dickens,  relative  to  the 
dispute  which  has  been  so  long  pending,  in  which  he 
says : — 

" '  Can  any  conference  be  held  between  me  as  repre- 
senting Mr.  Yates,  and  any  appointed  friend  of  yours, 
as  representing  you,  in  the  hope  and  purpose  of  some 
quiet  accommodation  of  this  deplorable  matter,  which 
will  satisfy  the  feelings  of  all  parties  ? ' 

"  I  have  written  to  Mr.  Dickens  to  say,  that  since 
the  commencement  of  this  business,  I  have  placed 
myself  entirely  in  the  hands  of  the  Committee  of  the 
Garrick,  and  am  still  as  ever  prepared  to  abide  by  any 
decision  at  which  they  may  arrive  on  the  subject.  I 
conceive  I  cannot,  if  I  would,  make  the  dispute  once 
more  personal,  or  remove  it  out  of  the  court  to  which 
I  submitted  it  for  arbitration. 

"  If  you  can  devise  any  peaceful  means  for  ending 
it,  no  one  will  be  better  pleased  than 

"  Your  obliged  faithful  servant 

"  W.  M.  THACKERAY. 

"  The  Committee  of  the  Garrick  Club." 

It  would  be  in  vain  to  attempt  to  conceal  that 
this  painful  affair  left  a  coolness  between  Mr. 
Thackeray  and  his  brother  novelist.  Mr.  Thackeray, 
smarting  under  the  elaborate  and  unjust  attack, 
portions  of  which  were  copied  and  widely  circu- 
lated in  other  journals,  could  not  bat  regard 
the  friend  and  adviser  of  his  critic  as,  in  some 


166  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist 

degree,  associated  with  it ;  and  Mr.  Dickens  on 
the  other  hand,  naturally  hurt  at  finding  his  offer  of 
arbitration  rejected,  gave  the  letters  to  the  original 
author  of  the  trouble  for  publication,  with  the 
remark — "  As  the  receiver  of  my  letter  did  not 
respect  the  confidence  in  which  it  addressed  him, 
there  can  be  none  left  for  you  to  violate.  I  send 
you  what  I  wrote  to  Mr.  Thackeray,  and  what  he 
wrote  to  me,  and  you  are  at  perfect  liberty  to  print 
the  two."  Thus,  for  a  while,  ended  this  painful 
affair.  Readers  of  Disraeli's  "  Quarrels  of  Au- 
thors "  will  miss  in  it  those  sterner  features  of  the 
dissensions  between  literary  men  as  they  were  con- 
ducted in  the  old  times ;  but  none  can  contem- 
plate this  difference  between  the  two  great  masters 
of  fiction  of  our  day  with  other  than  feelings  of 
regret  for  the  causes  which  led  to  it. 

It  is  pleasing,  however,  to  learn  that  the  dif- 
ferences between  them  were  ended  before  Mr. 
Thackeray's  death.  Singularly  enough,  this  happy 
circumstance  occurred  only  a  few  days  before  the 
time  when  it  would  have  been  too  late.  The  two 
great  authors  met  by  accident  in  the  lobby  of  a 
Club.  They  suddenly  turned  and  saw  each  other, 


and  the  Mem  of  Letters.  167 

and  the  unrestrained  impulse  of  both  was  to  hold 
out  the  hand  of  forgiveness  and  fellowship.  "With 
that  hearty  grasp  the  difference  which  estranged 
them  ceased  for  ever.  This,  says  the  narrator  of 
this  circumstance,  must  have  been  a  great  conso- 
lation to  Mr.  Dickens  when  he  saw  his  great  bro- 
ther laid  in  the  earth  at  Kensal  Green ;  and  no 
one  who  has  read  the  beautiful  and  affecting  article 
on  Thackeray,  from  the  hand  of  Mr.  Dickens,  just 
published  in  the  "  Cornhill  Magazine,"  can  doubt 
that  all  trace  of  this  painful  affair  had  vanished. 
"We  believe  that  the  writer  of  the  article  which 
had  created  so  much  ill-will,  when  the  angry  feel- 
ings excited  by  these  differences  had  passed  away, 
was  no  less  willing  to  admit  that  he  had  exceeded 
the  limits  of  fair  criticism,  and,  acting  upon  false 
impressions,  had  done  an  unintentional  wrong. 


168  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist 


CHAPTER  Y. 

COMMENCEMENT  OF  THE  "  CORNHILL  MAGAZINE" — UNSUC- 
CESSFUL ATTEMPT  AS  A  DEAMATIC  WRITER — THE  WOLF 
AND  THE  LAMB — THE  MOUNTAIN  SYLPH — THE  ADVEN- 
TURES OF  PHILIP — THE  LECTURES  ON  THE  GEORGES — 

EDITORIAL  TROUBLES  —  ANECDOTES  OF  HIS  CORRES- 
PONDENTS— WITHDRAWAL  FROM  THE  EDITORSHIP  OF 
THE  "CORNHILL" — BUILDING  OF  HIS  HOUSE  IN  KEN- 
SINGTON PALACE  GARDENS — MR.  HANNAT'S  ANECDOTES 
— DEATH  OF  MR.  THACKERAY — CIRCUMSTANCES  OF  HIS 
ILLNESS — THE  FUNERAL — HIS  UNFINISHED  WORK — MB. 

THACKERAY'S  MANUSCRIPTS — ms  EARLY  LIFE  AT  OTTERY 

ST.  MARY — VERSES  ON  CATHOLIC  EMANCIPATION  MEET- 
ING— M.  LOUIS  BLANC'S  LECTURES — MR.  ROBERT  BELT/— 

SCENE  AT  LECTURE  AT  OXFORD — VARIOUS  ANECDOTES — 
CONCLUSION. 

THE  great  event  of  the  last  few  years  of  Mr. 
Thackeray's  life  was  the  starting  of  the  "  Cornhill 
Magazine,"  the  first  Number  of  which,  with  the 
date  of  January,  1860,  appeared  shortly  before 
Christmas  in  the  previous  year.  The  great  success 
that  Mr.  Dickens  had  met  with  in  conducting  his 
weekly  periodical,  perhaps  suggested  to  Messrs. 


and  the  MOM  of  Letters.  1C9 

Smith,  Elder,  and  Co.  the  project  of  their  new 
monthly  magazine,  with  Mr.  Thackeray  for  editor. 
But  few  expected  a  design  so  bold  and  original  as 
they  found  developed  by  the  appearance  of  Num- 
ber 1.  The  contents  were  by  contributors  of  first- 
rate  excellence ;  the  quantity  of  matter  in  each 
» 

was  equal  to  that  given  by  the  old-established 
magazines,  published  at  half-a-crown,  while  the 
price  of  the  "  Cornhill,"  as  every  one  knows,  was 
only  a  shilling.  The,  editor's  ideas  on  the  subject 
of  the  new  periodical  were  explained  by  him  some 
weeks  before  the  commencement  in  a  character- 
istic letter  to  his  friend,  Mr.  G.  H.  Lewes,  which 
was  afterwards  adopted  as  the  vehicle  of  announc- 
ing the  design  to  the  public. 

"  I  am  not  mistaken,"  says  this  letter,  "  in  supposing 
that  my  readers  give  me  credit  for  experience  and  obser- 
vation, for  having  lived  with  educated  people  in  many 
countries,  and  seen  the  world  in  no  small  variety ;  and, 
having  heard  me  soliloquize,  with  so  much  kindness  and 
favour,  and  say  my  own  say  about  life,  and  men  and 
women,  they  will  not  be  unwilling  to  try  me  as  Con- 
ductor of  a  Concert,  in  which  I  trust  many  skilful  per- 
formers will  take  part.  "We  hope  for  a  large  number  of 
readers,  and  must  seek  in  the  first  place,  to  amuse  and  in- 
terest them.  Fortunately  for  some  folks,  novels  are  as 
8 


170  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist 

daily  bread  to  others ;  and  fiction  of  course  must  form  a 
part,  but  only  a  part,  of  our  entertainment.  "We  want,  on 
the  other  hand,  as  much  reality  as  possible — discussion 
and  narrative  of  events  interesting  to  the  public,  personal 
adventures  and  observation,  familiar  reports  of  scientific 
discovery,  description  of  Social  Institutions — quicguid 
agunt  homines — a  Great  Eastern,  a  Battle  in  China,  a 
Race-Course,  a  popular  Preacher — there  is  hardly  any 
subject  we  don't  want  to  hear  about,  from  lettered  and 
instructed  men  who  are  competent  to  speak  on  it." 

The  first  number  contained  the  commencement 
of  that  series  of  "  Roundabout  Papers,"  in  which 
we  get  so  many  interesting  glimpses  of  Mr. 
Thackeray's  personal  history  and  feelings,  and 
also  the  opening  chapters  of  his  story  of  "  Lovel 
the  Widower."  The  latter  was  originally  written 
in  the  form  of  a  comedy,  entitled  "The  "Wolf 
and  the  Lamb,"  which  was  intended  to  be  per- 
formed during  the  management  of  Mr.  Wigan 
at  the  Olympic  Theatre :  but  which  was  finally 
declined  by  the  latter.  Mr.  Thackeray,  we 
believe,  acquiesced  in  the  unfavourable  judg- 
ment of  the  practical  manager  upon  the  acting 
qualities  of  his  comedy ;  and  resolved  to  throw  it 
into  narrative  form  in  the  story  with  which  his 
readers  are  now  familiar.  This  was  not  the  first 


and  tJie  Man  of  Letters.  171 

instance  of  his  writing  for  the  stage.  If  we  are  not 
mistaken,  the  libretto  of  Mr.  John  Barnett's  popu- 
lar opera  of  the  "  Mountain  Sylph,"  produced 
some  thirty  years  since,  was  from  his  pen.  In 
the  "  Cornhill "  also,  appeared  his  story  of  "  Philip 
on  his  way  through  the  "World."  The  scenes  in 
this  are  said  to  have  been  founded  in  great  part 
upon  his  own  experiences ;  and  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  the  adventures  of  Philip  Firmin  repre- 
sent, in  many  respects,  those  of  the  Charterhouse 
boy,  who  afterwards  became  known  to  the 
world  as  the  author  of  "  Yanity  Fair."  But  in 
all  such  matters  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  the 
writer  of  fiction  feels  himself  at  liberty  to  deviate 
from  the  facts  of  his  life  in  any  way  which  he 
finds  necessary  for  the  development  of  his  story. 
Certainly  the  odious  stepfather  of  Philip  must 
not  be  taken  for  Mr.  Thackeray's  portrait  of  his 
own  stepfather,  towards  whom  he  always  enter- 
tained feelings  of  respect  and  affection.  "We  may 
also  remind  our  readers  that  the  "  Lectures  on 
the  Four  Georges,"  first  appeared  in  print  in  this 
popular  periodical.  The  sales  reached  by  the 
earlier  numbers  were  enormous,  and  far  beyond 


172  Thackeray  /  the  Humourist 

anything  ever  attained  by  a  monthly  magazine ; 
even  after  the  usual  subsidence  which  follows  the 
flush  of  a  great  success,  the  circulation  had,  we 
believe,  settled  at  a  point  far  exceeding  the  most 
sanguine  hopes  of  the  projectors. 

These  fortunate  results  of  the  undertaking 
were,  however,  not  without  serious  drawbacks. 
The  editor  soon  discovered  that  his  new  position 
was,  in  many  respects,  an  unenviable  one.  Friends 
and  acquaintances,  not  to  speak  of  constant 
readers  and  "  regular  subscribers  to  your  inter- 
esting magazine,"  sent  him  bushels  of  manu- 
scripts, of  which  it  was  rare  indeed  to  find  one 
that  could  be  accepted.  Sensitive  poets  and 
poetesses  took  umbrage  at  refusals  however  kindly 
and  delicately  expressed.  "  How  can  I  go  into 
society  with  comfort  ? "  asked  the  editor  of  a 
friend  at  this  time.  "  I  dined  the  other  day  at 

's,  and  at  the  table  were  four  gentlemen, 

whose  masterpieces  of  literary  art  I  had  been 
compelled  to  decline  with  thanks."  Not  six 
months  elapsed  before  he  began  to  complain 
of  "  thorns  "  in  the  editorial  cushion.  One  lady 
wrote  to  entreat  that  her  article  might  be  in- 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  173 

serted  on  the  ground  that  she  had  known  better 
days,  and  had  a  sick  and  widowed  mother  to 
maintain — others  began  with  fine  phrases  about 
the  merits  and  eminent  genius  of  the  person  they 
were  addressing.  Some  found  fault  with  articles, 
and  abused  contributor  and  editor.  An  Irish- 
man threatened  punishment  for  an  implied  libel 
in  "  Lovel  the  Widower,"  upon  ballet-dancers, 
whom  he  declared  to  be  superior  to  the  snarlings 
of  dyspeptic  libellers,  or  the  spiteful  attacks  and 
lyrutum  fulmen  of  ephemeral  authors.  This  gen- 
tleman also  informed  the  editor  that  theatrical 
managers  were  in  the  habit  of  speaking  good 
English — possibly  better  than  ephemeral  authors. 
"  Out  of  mere  malignity,"  exclaims  the  unfortu- 
nate editor,  "  I  suppose  there  is  no  man  who 
would  like  to  make  enemies.  But  here,  in  this 
editorial  business  you  can't  do  otherwise  ;  and  a 
queer,  strange,  bitter  thought  it  is  that  must 
cross  the  mind  of  many  a  public  man.  *  Do  what 
I  will,  be  innocent  or  spiteful,  be  generous  or 
cruel,  there  are  A.  and  B.  and  C.  and  D.  who 
will  hate  me  to  the  end  of  the  chapter — to  the 
chapter's  end — to  the  finis  of  the  page — when 


Thackeray  /  tJie  Humourist 


hate  and  envy,  and  fortune  and  disappointment 
shall  be  over.' "  * 

It  was  chiefly  owing  to  these  causes  that  Mr. 
Thackeray  finally  determined  to  withdraw  from 
the  editorship  of  the  Magazine ;  though  continuing 
to  contribute  to  it,  and  to  take  an  interest  in  its 
progress.  In  an  amusing  address  to  contributors 
and  correspondents,  dated  18th  March,  1862,  he 
announces  this  determination.  "I  believe,"  he 
says,  "  my  own  special  readers  will  agree  that  my 
books  will  not  suffer  when  their  author  is  re- 
leased from  the  daily  task  of  reading,  accepting, 
refusing,  losing  and  finding  the  works  of  other 
people.  To  say  *  !Nb,'  has  often  caused  me  a 
morning's  peace,  and  a  day's  work.  Oh,  those 
hours  of  madness,  spent  in  searching  for  Louisa's 
lost  lines  to  her  dead  '  Piping  Bullfinch,'  or  '  Khoj 
Senoj's'f  mislaid  Essay.  I  tell  them  for  the  last 
time  that  the  (late)  Editor  will  not  be  responsible 
for  rejected  communications,  and  herewith  send 
off  the  chair  and  the  great  "  Cornhill  Magazine  " 

*  "  Roundabout  Papers,"  No.  5. 

f  The  reader  mil  discover  the  meaning  of  this  by  re- 
versing the  letters  of  Nhoj  Senoj's  name. 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  175 

tin  box  with  its  load  of  care."  In  the  same 
address  he  announced  that  while  the  tale  of 
"  Philip  "  had  been  passing  through  the  press,  hfe 
had  been  preparing  another,  on  which  he  had 
worked  at  intervals  for  many  years  past,  and 
which  he  hoped  to  introduce  in  the  following  year. 
In  a  pecuniary  sense,  the  "  Cornhill  Mag- 
azine" had  undoubtedly  proved  a  fortunate 
venture  for  its  editor.  It  was  during  his  editor- 
ship that  he  removed  from  his  house,  No.  36, 
Onslow-square,  in  which  he  had  resided  for  some 
years,  to  the  more  congenial  neighbourhood  of 
the  Palace  at  Kensington,  that  "  Old  Court 
Suburb,"  which  Mr.  Leigh  Hunt  has  gossipped 
about  so  pleasantly.  Mr.  Thackeray  took  upon 
a  long  lease,  a  somewhat  dilapidated  mansion  on 
the  west  side  of  Kensington  Palace-gardens.  His 
intention  was  to  repair  and  improve  it,  but  he 
finally  resolved  to  pull  it  down,  and  build  another 
in  its  stead.  The  new  house,  a  handsome,  solid 
mansion  of  choice  red  brick  with  stone  facings, 
was  built  from  a  design  drawn  by  himself ;  and 
in  this  house  he  continued  to  reside  till  the  time 
of  his  death.  "  It  was,"  says  Mr.  Hannay,  "  a 


176  Tliackerwy  ;  the  Humourist 

dwelling  worthy  of  one  who  really  represented 
literature  in  the  great  world,  and  who  planting 
himself  on  his  books,  yet  sustained  the  character 
of  his  profession  with  all  the  dignity  of  a  gentle- 
man. A  friend  who  called  on  him  there  from 
Edinburgh,  in  the  summer  of  1862,  knowing  of 
old  his  love  of  the  Yenusian,  playfully  reminded 
him  what  Horace  says  of  those  who,  regardless  of 
their  sepulchre,  employ  themselves  in  building 
houses : — 

"  Sepulchri 
Immemor  struis  domos." 

"  Nay,"  said  he,  "  I  am  memor  sejndchw,  for 
this  house  will  always  let  for  so  many  hundreds 
(mentioning  the  sum)  a  year."  "We  may  add,  that 
Mr.  Thackeray  was  always  of  opinion,  that  not- 
withstanding the  somewhat  costly  proceeding  of 
pulling  down  and  re-erecting,  he  had  achieved  the 
rare  result  for  a  private  gentleman,  of  building  for 
himself  a  house  which,  regarded  as  an  investment 
of  a  portion  of  his  fortune,  left  no  cause  for  regret. 

Our  brief  narrative  draws  to  a  close.  The 
announcement  of  the  death  of  Mr.  Thackeray, 
coming  so  suddenly  upon  us  in  the  very 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  177 

midst  of  our  great  Christian  festival  of  1863,  cre- 
ated a  sensation  which  will  be  long  remembered. 
His  hand  had  been  missed  in  the  last  two  num- 
bers of  the  "  Cornhill  Magazine,"  but  only  be- 
cause he  had  been  busily  engaged  in  laying  the 
foundations  of  another  of  those  continuous  works 
of  fiction  which  his  readers  so  eagerly  expected. 
In  the  then  current  Number  of  the  "  Cornhill 
Magazine,"  the  customary  orange-coloured  fly- 
leaf had  announced  that  '  a  new  serial  story  '  by 
him  would  be  commenced  early  in  the  new  year ; 
but  the  promise  had  scarcely  gone  abroad  when 
we  learnt  that  the  hand  which  had  penned  its 
opening  chapters,  in  the  fall  prospect  of  a  happy 
ending,  could  never  again  add  line  or  word  to 
that  long  range  of  writings  which  must  always 
remain  one  of  the  best  evidences  of  the  strength 
and  beauty  of  our  English  speech. 

On  the  Tuesday  preceding  he  had  followed  to 
the  grave  his  relative,  Lady  Rodd,  widow  of  Yice- 
Admiral  Sir  John  Tremayne  Eodd,  K.C.B.,  who 
was  the  daughter  of  Major  James  Rennell,  F.R.S., 
Surveyor-General  of  Bengal,  by  the  daughter  of 
the  Rev.  Dr.  Thackeray,  Head  Master  of  Harrow 

8* 


178  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist 

School.  Only  the  day  before  this,  according  to  a 
newspaper  account,  he  had  been  congratulating 
himself  on  having  finished  four  numbers  of  a  new 
novel ;  he  had  the  manuscript  in  his  pocket,  and 
with  a  boyish  frankness  showed  the  last  pages  to 
a  friend,  asking  him  to  read  them,  and  see  what 
he  could  make  of  them.  When  he  had  completed 
four  numbers  more  he  said  he  would  subject  him- 
self to  the  skill  of  a  very  clever  surgeon,  and  be 
no  more  an  invalid.  Only  two  days  before  he  had 
been  seen  at  his  club  in  high  spirits ;  but  with  all 
his  high  spirits,  he  did  not  seem  well ;  he  com- 
plained of  illness;  but  he  was  often  ill,  and  he 
laughed  off  his  present  attack.  He  said  that  he 
was  about  to  undergo  some  treatment  which  would 
work  a  perfect  cure  in  his  system,  and  so  he  made 
light  of  his  malady.  He  was  suffering  from  two 
distinct  complaints,  one  of  which  has  now  wrought 
his  death.  More  than  a  dozen  years  before,  while 
he  was  writing  "  Pendennis,"  the  publication  of 
that  work  was  stopped  by  his  serious  illness.  He 
was  brought  to  death's  door,  and  he  was  saved 
from  death  by  Dr.  Elliotson,  to  whom,  in  gratitude, 
he  dedicated  the  novel  when  he  lived  to  finish  it. 


the  Man  of  Letters.  179 


But  ever  since  that  ailment  he  had  been  subject 
every  month  or  six  weeks  to  attacks  of  sickness, 
attended  with  violent  retching.  He  was  con- 
gratulating himself,  just  before  his  death,  on 
the  failure  of  his  old  enemy  to  return,  and 
then  he  checked  himself,  as  if  he  ought  not 
to  be  too  sure  of  a  release  from  his  plague. 
On  the  morning  of  Wednesday,  the  23rd  of 
December,  the  complaint  returned,  and  he  was 
in  great  suffering  all  day.*  He  was  no  better 
in  the  evening,  and  his  valet,  Charles  Sargent, 
left  him  at  eleven  o'clock  on  Wednesday  night, 
Mr.  Thackeray  wishing  him  "  Good  night  "  as  he 
went  out  of  the  room.  At  nine  o'clock  on  the 
following  morning  the  valet  entering  his  master's 
chamber  as  usual,  he  found  him  lying  on  his 
back  quite  still,  with  his  arms  spread  over  the 
coverlet,  but  he  took  no  notice,  as  he  also  was 
accustomed  to  see  his  master  thus  after  one  of 
his  stomach  attacks.  He  brought  some  coffee 
and  set  it  down  beside  the  bed,  and  it  was  only 
when  he  returned  after  an  interval  and  found 
that  the  cup  had  not  been  tasted,  that  a  sudden 

*  Times  Newspaper,  25th  Dec.,  1863, 


180  Thackeray  y  the  Humourist 

alarm  seized  him,  and  he  discovered  that  his 
master  was  dead.  About  midnight  Mr.  Thack- 
eray's mother,  who  slept  overhead,  had  heard  him 
get  up  and  walk  about  his  room;  but  she  was 
not  alarmed,  as  this  was  a  habit  of  her  son  when 
unwell.  It  is  supposed  that  he  had,  in  fact,  been 
seized  at  this  time,  and  that  the  violence  of  the 
attack  had  brought  on  the  effusion  on  the  brain, 
which,  as  the  post-mortem  examination  showed, 
was  the  immediate  cause  of  death.  His  medical 
attendants  attributed  his  death  to  effusion  on  the 
brain.  They  added  that  he  had  a  very  large 
brain,  weighing  no  less  than  58£oz.  He  thus 
died  of  the  complaint  which  seemed  to  trouble 
him  least. 

The  shock  occasioned  by  the  news  of  his 
death  cannot  be  better  described  than  in  the 
words  of  one  whose  generous  testimony  is  the 
more  interesting  from  the  fact  of  its  author  hav- 
ing been  the  acknowledged  writer  of  the  unjust 
and  inconsiderate  sketch  of  Mr.  Thackeray's  life 
and  character,  which  had  led  to  the  unhappy  dis- 
sensions in  the  Garrick  Club. 

"On  Christmas-Eye,"  says  Mr.  Edmund  Tales,  the 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  181 

writer  referred  to,  "in  the  twilight,  at  the  time  when 
the  clubs  are  filled  with  men  who  have  dropped  in  on 
their  homeward  way  to  hear  the  latest  news,  or  to 
exchange  pleasant  jests  or  seasonable  greetings,  a 
rumour  ran  through  London  that  Thackeray  was  dead. 
I  myself  heard  it  on  club  steps  from  the  friend  who  had 
just  returned  from  telegraphing  the  intelligence  to  an 
Irish  newspaper,  and  at  first  doubted,  as  all  did,  the 
authenticity  of  the  information.  One  had  seen  him 
two  days  before,  another  had  dined  in  his  company  but 
two  nights  previously;  but  it  was  true!  Thackeray 
was  dead;  and  the  purest  English  prose  writer  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  and  the  novelist  with  a  greater 
knowledge  of  the  human  heart  as  it  really  is  than  any 
one — with  the  exception,  perhaps,  of  Shakspeare  and 
Balzac — was  suddenly  struck  down  in  the  midst  of  us. 
In  the  midst  of  us!  No  long  illness,  no  lingering 
decay,  no  gradual  suspension  of  power;  almost  pen  in 
hand,  like  Kempenfelt,  he  went  down.  "Well  said  the 
Examiner — 'Whatever  little  feuds  may  have  gathered 
about  Mr.  Thackeray's  public  life  lay  lightly  on  the 
surface  of  the  minds  that  chanced  to  be  in  contest 
with  him.  They  could  be  thrown  off  in  a  moment, 
at  the  first  shock  of  the  news  that  he  was  dead.'  It 
seemed  impossible  to  realize  the  fact.  No  other  celeb- 
rity, be  he  writer,  statesman,  artist,  actor,  seemed  so 
thoroughly  a  portion  of  London.  That  'good  grey 
head  which  all  men  knew'  was  as  easy  of  recognition 
as  his  to  whom  the  term  applied,  the  Duke  of  Wel- 
lington. Scarcely  a  day  passed  without  his  being  seen 
in  the  Pall-Mall  districts;  and  a  Londoner  showing 


182  TJiackeray  /  the  Humourist 


country  cousins  the  wonders  of  the  metropolis,  gen- 
erally knew  how  to  arrange  for  them  to  have  a  sight  of 
the  great  English  writer.  The  Examiner  was  right. 
God  knows !  the  shock  had  thrown  off  all  but  regretful 
feelings,  and  an*  impossibility  to  comprehend  the  mag- 
nitude of  the  sudden  loss.  "We  talked  of  him — of  how, 
more  than  any  other  author,  he  had  written  about  what 
is  said  of  men  immediately  after  their  death — of  how 
he  had  written  of  the  death-chamber,  '  They  shall  come 
in  here  for  the  last  time  to  you,  my  friend  in  motley.' 
We  read  that  marvellous  sermon  which  the  week-day 
preacher  delivered  to  entranced  thousands  over  old 
John  Sedley's  dead  body,  and  '  sadly  fell  our  Christmas- 
Eve.'  One  would  have  thought  that  the  Times  could 
have  spared  more  space  than  a  bare  three-quarters  of  a 
column  for  the  record  of  such  a  man's  life  and  death. 
One  would  have  thought  that  "Westminster  Abbey 
might  have  opened  her  doors  for  the  reception  of  the 
earthly  remains  of  one  whose  name  will  echo  to  the  end 
of  time.  And,  as  I  write,  the  thought  occurs  to  me 
that  the  same  man  was,  perhaps,  the  last  to  wish  for 
either  of  such  distinctions." 

The  funeral  took  place  on  the  30th  of  Decem- 
ber, the  body  being  interred  in  Kensal  Green 
cemetery.  The  day  was  beautiful,  and  the  atmo- 
sphere as  balmy  as  if  it  were  June  instead  of 
December.  On  the  way  to  the  cemetery  there 
could  be  seen  not  only  the  carriages  of  the  aristo- 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  183 

cratic  and  wealthy,  but  also  many  persons  of  the 
humbler  class ;  and,  indeed,  there  was  much 
evidence  at  the  grave  that  the  English  people — 
and  not  any  particular  class — felt  their  bereave- 
ment in  the  gifted  and  genial  author.  It  was 
remarkable  also  what  various  departments  of  life 
and  thought  were  represented — the  actor  and  the 
artist,  the  editor  and  the  novelist,  the  poet  and 
the  clergyman,  all  were  there  to  mourn  over  one 
whose  mind  and  heart  were  a  hundred-gated  city. 
Amongst  the  1500  persons  present  were  noticed 
Mr.  Robert  Browning,  Mr.  Charles  Dickens,  Mr. 
Anthony  Trollope,  Mr.  Mark  Lemon,  Mr.  Gr.  H. 
Lewes,  Mr.  Theodore  Martin,  Mr.  Isaac  Butt, 
M.P.,  Mr.  W.  H.  Russell,  LL.D.,  Mr.  Laurence, 
barrister ;  Mr.  J.  C.  O'Dowd,  barrister ;  Mr. 
Higgins  (Jacob  Omnium),  Mr.  Robert  Bell,  Mr. 
Howell  Morgan,  the  High  Sheriff  of  Merioneth- 
shire ;  Rev.  Dr.  Rudge,  the  Archdeacon  of  Lon- 
don, Master  of  the  Charterhouse,  in  which  Mr. 
Thackeray  was  educated ;  Mr.  Millais,  R.A. ;  Mr. 
George  Cruikshank,  an  old  friend  of  Mr.  Thack- 
eray, with  whom  in  his  early  life  the  author 
studied  etching ;  Mr.  Leech,  Mr.  Shirley  Brooks, 


184  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist 

Mr.  Creswell,  Mr.  H.  Cole,  C.B.,  Mr.  C.  L. 
Gruneisen,  Mr.  Charles  Mathews,  Mr.  Tom  Tay- 
lor, Sir  J.  Carmichael,  Mr.  J.  Hollingshead,  Mr. 
Dallas,  Mr.  O'Neile,  Mr.  Creswick,  K.A. ;  M. 
Louis  Blanc,  Mr.  "Walker,  Mr.  E.  Piggott,  Mr.  M. 
D.  Conway,  Mr.  G.  J.  Holyoake,  and  Miss  Brad- 
don.  Mr.  Carlyle,  between  whom  and  Mr.  Thack- 
eray a  friendship  of  many  years  subsisted,  was 
prevented  from  attending  by  illness  in  his  family. 
The  funeral  procession,  which,  in  accordance 
with  the  well-known  tastes  of  the  deceased,  was 
remarkably  simple,  arrived  at  the  cemetery  about 
twelve  o'clock.  There  was  but  one  mourning 
coach,  in  which  were  seated  Mr.  F.  St.  John 
Thackeray  and  Mr.  James  Rodd,  cousins  of  the 
deceased.  In  the  succeeding  carriage,  the  private 
carriage  of  Mr.  Thackeray,  were  Captain  Shaw, 
his  brother-in-law,  and  the  Hon.  E.  Curzon. 
The  remaining  coaches  were  those  of  Earl  Gran- 
ville,  Mr.  Martin  Thackeray,  General  Low,  Lord 
Gardiner,  Sir  "W.  Eraser,  Hon.  E.  Curzon,  Mr. 
Macaulay,  Q.C.,  Sir  James  Colville,  and  Mr. 
Bradbury,  of  the  eminent  publishing  firm  of 
Bradbury  and  Evans. 


and  the  Man  of  'Letters.  185 

The  funeral  service  was  read  by  the  chaplain 
of  the  cemetery,  Rev.  Charles  Stuart. 

The  Misses  Thackeray  were  present  in  the 
chapel,  and  also  looked  into  the  grave.  A  deep 
sympathy  was  felt  by  all  in  their  profound  grief 
at  the  loss  of  one  whose  tenderness  as  a  man  was 
not  less  than  his  strength  as  an  author. 

The  coffin  was  quite  plain  and  bore  the  in- 
scription : — 

WILLIAM  MAKEPEACE  THACKERAY,  ESQ  , 

DIED   24TH  DECEMBER,  1863, 

AGED   52  TEARS. 

The  scene  was  altogether  deeply  impressive. 
Many  eyes  were  fastened  upon  Mr.  Dickens,  as 
he  stood,  side  by  side  with  Mr.  Browning,  look- 
ing into  the  grave  of  one  whose  greatness  none 
could  or  did  more  appreciate.  But  there  were 
many  unknown  to  fame,  and  whose  ties  to  the 
deceased  were  known  only  to  their  own  hearts, 
who  pressed  their  way  to  gaze  with  evident  sor- 
row on  the  coffin.  And  after  the  solemn  words, 
"  dust  to  dust "  had  fallen  on  the  sad  hearts  there 
gathered,  and  the  ceremonies  were  over,  the 
company  seemed  loth  to  depart,  and  lingered 


186  2'hackeray  ;  the  Humourist 

in   quiet  and  hushed  conversation  around  the 
grave. 

Just  "before  his  death,  as  has  been  already 
stated,  he  had  rejoiced  over  the  completion  of 
the  fourth  monthly  portion  of  his  story,  seeing  in 
it  the  promise  of  a  work  which  would  not  be 
found,  when  completed,  to  fall  short  even  of  his 
fame.  It  was,  like  the  Yirginians,  a  story  of 
the  times  of  George  the  First  and  George  the 
Second.  Some  months  previously  it  was  ru- 
moured that  the  next  work  from  his  pen  would 
relate  to  an  early  period  of  English  history — a 
statement  which  a  bold  guesser  subsequently  en- 
larged into  the  assertion  that  its  scene  would  be 
laid  in  the  times  of  the  Anglo-Saxons.  Its 
author  was  doubtless  amused  at  the  paragraphs 
which  made  the  customary  tour  through  the  press 
of  London  and  the  provinces,  gravely  informing 
the  world  that  the  author  of  "  Esmond,"  and  the 
"  Essays  on  the  Humourists,"  who  had  hitherto 
delighted  in  the  times  of  elaborate  flowing  wigs, 
arid  swords,  and  coats  with  huge  lapels,  had  sud- 
denly betaken  himself  to  those  misty  days  of 
savage  manners  and  scanty  clothing.  The  ru- 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  187 

mour,  in  its  unembellished  form  was,  however, 
not  without  foundation.  He  had  recently  con- 
templated writing  a  story  of  the  days  of  Henry 
the  Fifth,  in  which  period  of  our  history  some 
accidental  bent  of  his  reading  had  led  him  to  take 
a  special  interest.  He  had  even  thought  of  some 
of  its  details,  and  had  amused  himself  in  imagi- 
nation with  a  grotesque  scene  in  one  of  the  old 
chroniclers  of  a  famous  royal  lady,  who  rode  into 
a  fair  city  of  Normandy  upon  a  cow.  But  the 
notion  was  laid  aside.  His  old  passion  for  re- 
creating the  life  and  manners  of  the  last  century 
was  too  powerful  to  be  resisted,  and  he  finally 
found  himself  at  home  in  a  story  of  English  life 
of  the  old  period,  in  which  the  elaborate  imitation 
of  the  style  of  the  Augustan  age  would  not  be 
allowed,  as  in  the  "Adventures  of  Henry  Esmond," 
to  interfere  with  the  development  of  a  story  of  a 
good  and  heroic  stamp,  in  the  presence  of  which 
the  old  complaints  from  adverse  critics  of  cynicism 
and  coldness  should  be  heard  no  more. 


188  Thackeray  /  the  Humourist 

SOME  few  detached  anecdotes  may  here  be  added. 
Mr.  Thackeray  was  remarkable  among  his  fellow 
literary  men  no  less  for  the  clearness  of  his  hand- 
writing than  for  the  general  neatness  of  his  manu- 
scripts. Page  after  page  of  that  small  round  hand 
would  be  written  by  him  absolutely — for  he  rare- 
ly altered  his  first  draughts  in  any  way — without 
interlineation,  blot,  or  blemish  of  any  kind.  Only 
a  few  weeks  before  he  died  he  spent  a  morning  in 
the  reading-room  of  the  British  Museum,  and  there 
by  accident  left  upon  a  table  a  page  of  the  manu- 
script of  his  unpublished  story.  The  paper  being 
found  by  the  attendant,  so  well  was  this  fact  known, 
that  the  extreme  clearness  of  the  writing  at  once 
suggested  its  owner.  An  appeal  to  one  of  the 
officials  who  was  familiar  with  his  autographs  de- 
cided the  matter,  and  Mr.  Thackeray,  to  his  great 
surprise  and  gratification,  was  interrupted  in  his 
fruitless  search  at  home  by  the  arrival  of  a  letter 
enclosing  the  missing  page. 

It  having  been  stated  in  an  Exeter  paper  that 
Mr.  Thackeray,  when  a  boy,  went  to  school  at 
Ottery  St.  Mary,  in  that  county,  the  Rev.  Dr. 


cmd  the  Mem  of  Letters.  189 

Cornish,  the  vicar  of  that  place,  has  recently 
written  to  contradict  it.  It  appears  from  the 
Doctor's  letter  that  the  step-father  of  the  great 
novelist  rented  an  estate  near  Ottery  St.  Mary, 
and  that  the  latter,  while  stopping  there,  used  to 
visit  at  the  vicarage  and  borrow  books  of  Dr. 
Cornish.  The  scenery  of  Clavering  St.  Mary  and 
Chatteris,  in  "  Pendennis,"  corresponds,  according 
to  the  latter,  in  minute  particulars  with  that  of 
Ottery  St.  Mary  and  Exeter.  One  of  the  little 
marginal  vignettes  in  that  famous  novel  is  a  pic- 
ture of  the  clock  tower  of  Ottery  church.  Thack- 
eray describes  the  youthful  Pendennis  as  galloping 
through  "  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey,  the  tragic  play- 
writers,  and  the  charming  wicked  Aristophanes, 
whom  he  vowed  to  be  the  greatest  poet  of  all." 
When  the  author  was  about  the  age  of  his  young 
hero,  he  borrowed  of  Dr.  Cornish  Carey's  trans- 
lation of  "  The  Birds  of  Aristophanes,"  which  he 
read,  says  the  Doctor,  with  intense  delight,  and 
returned  it  with  three  humorous  illustrative  draw- 
ings. Mr.  Thackeray  says  in  "  Pendennis  " — 
"  It  was  at  this  period  of  his  existence  that  Pen 
broke  out  in  the  poet's  corner  of  the  county 


190  Thackeray  /  the  Humourist 

Chronicle  with,  some  verses  with  which  he  was 
perfectly  well  satisfied."  Dr.  Cornish  adds  that 
when  the  great  Catholic  emancipation  meeting 
took  place  on  Penenden  Heath,  Thackeray  brought 
htm  some  verses,  which  were  afterwards  forwarded 
to  an  Exeter  paper  for  insertion,  and  duly  ap- 
peared. These  verses,  the  Doctor  thinks,  were 
the  first  composition  of  the  great  humourist  that 
were  ever  published : — 

IRISH  MELODY. 

Air— "  The  Mnstrel  Boy?"* 
Mister  Shiel  into  Kent  has  gone, 

On  Penenden  Heath  you'll  find  him ; 
Nor  think  you  that  he  came  alone, 

There's  Doctor  Doyle  behind  him. 
"  Men  of  Kent,"  said  this  little  man, 

"  If  you  hate  Emancipation, 
You're  a  set  of  fools : "  he  then  began 
A  "  cut  and  dry  "  oration. 

He  strove  to  speak,  but  the  men  of  Kent, 

Began  a  grievous  shouting, 
When  out  of  his  waggon  the  little  man  went, 

And  put  a  stop  to  his  spouting. 
"  What  though  these  heretics  heard  me  not," 

Quoth  he  to  his  friend  Canonical ; 
"  My  speech  is  safe  in  the  Times  I  wot, 

And  eke  in  the  Morning  Chronicle.'1'' 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  191 

Louis  Blanc,  the  historian  of  the  French  Revo- 
lution, has  recently  related  in  a  French  newspaper 
the  following  story :— "A  few  years  ago  the  London 
papers  announced  that  a  Frenchman  whose  name 
I  need  not  give  you  [M.  Louis  Blanc],  was  going 
to  deliver  in  English  what  is  here  called  a  lecture. 
Foremost  among  those  who  were  moved  by  a  feel- 
ing of  a  delicate  kindness  and  hospitable  curiosity 
to  encourage  the  lecturer  with  their  presence  was 
Thackeray.  When  the  lecture  was  over,  the 
manager  of  the  literary  institution  where  it  was 
delivered,  for  some  reason  or  other,  recommended 
the  company  to  take  care  of  their  pockets  in  the 
crowd  at  the  doors — a  hint  which  was  not  parti- 
cularly to  the  taste  of  a  highly  respectable  and 
even  distinguished  audience.  Some  even  protested, 
and  none  more  warmly  than  an  unknown  person, 
very  well  dressed,  sitting  next  to  Mr.  Robert  Bell. 
Not  content  with  speaking,  this  unknown  person 
gesticulated  in  a  singularly  animated  manner. 
1  Isn't  such  a  suggestion  indecent,  sir,  insulting  ? ' 
said  he  to  Mr.  Bell.  '  "What  does  he  take  us  for  ? ' 
&c.,  &c.  After  giving  vent  to  his  indignation  in 
this  way  for  some  moments,  the  susceptible 


192  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist. 

stranger  disappeared,  and  when  Mr.  Eobert  Bell, 
who  wanted  to  know  how  long  the  lecture  had 
lasted,  put  his  hand  to  his  watch-pocket,  behold  ! 
his  watch  had  disappeared  likewise.  Thackeray, 
to  whom  his  excellent  friend  mentioned  the  mis- 
hap, invited  Eobert  Bell  to  dinner  a  day  or  two 

mrf  «/ 

after.  When  the  day  came,  Robert  Bell  took  his 
seat  at  his  friend's  table,  round  which  a  joyous 
company  of  wits  were  gathered,  and  soon  found 
himself  encircled  by  a  rattling  fire  of  banter  about 
an  article  of  his  which  had  just  appeared  in  the 
'  Cornhill  Magazine,'  then  conducted  by  Thack- 
eray ;  an  article  remarkable  in  all  respects,  and 
which  had  attracted  universal  notice,  as  a  faithful, 
serious,  and  philosophical  account  of  some  effects 
of  Spiritism  which  the  author  had  witnessed  at  a 
seance  given  by  Mr.  Home.  Mr.  Robert  Bell  is 
an  admirable  causeur  ;  his  talk  is  a  happy  mixture 
of  an  Englishman's  good  sense  and  an  Irishman's 
verve.  So  his  questioners  found  their  match  in 
brilliant  fence.  Next  day  a  mysterious  messenger 
arrived  at  Mr.  Robert  Bell's,  and  handed  to  him, 
without  saying  who  had  sent  it,  a  box  containing 
a  note,  worded,  as  nearly  as  I  recollect,  as  follows : 


Anecdotes  and  jReminiscences.  193 

— '  The  Spirits  present  their  compliments  to  Mr. 
Robert  Bell,  and  as  a  mark  of  their  gratitude  to 
him,  they  have  the  honour  to  return  him  the 
watch  that  was  stolen  from  him.'  And  a  watch 
it  really  was  that  the  box  contained,  but  a  watch 
far  finer  and  richer  than  the  one  which  had  disap- 
peared. Mr.  Robert  Bell  at  once  thought  of 
Thackeray,  and  wrote  to  him  without  further  ex- 
planation : — '  I  don't  know  if  it  is  you,  but  it  is 
very  like  you.'  Thackeray  in  reply  sent  a  carica- 
ture portrait  of  himself,  drawn  by  his  own  hand, 
and  representing  a  winged  spirit  in  a  flowing  robe, 
and  spectacles  on  nose.  Thackeray  had  in  early 
life  taken  to  painting,  and  perhaps  if  he  had  pur- 
sued his  first  vocation,  he  might  have  come  in 
time  to  handle  the  brush  as  well  as  he  afterwards 
handled  the  pen.  At  any  rate  the  drawing  in 
question,  as  I  can  bear  witness,  was  one  to  bring 
tears  into  your  eyes  for  laughing.  It  was  accom- 
panied by  a  note  as  follows : — '  The  Spirit  Gabriel 
presents  his  compliments  to  Mr.  Robert  Bell,  and 
takes  the  liberty  to  communicate  to  him  the  por- 
trait of  the  person  who  stole  the  watch.'  Now, 
is  not  tliis  bit  of  a  story  charming  ?  What  grace ! 
9 


194  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist. 

what  delicacy !  what  humour  in  this  inspiration 
of  a  friend  who,  to  punish  his  friend  for  having 
done  the  Spirits  the  honour  to  speak  of  them, 
sends  him  with  a  smile  a  magnificent  present. 
Honourable  to  Thackeray,  this  anecdote  is  equally 
so  to  Robert  Bell,  who  could  inspire  such  feelings 
in  such  a  man.  And  this  is  why  I  feel  a  double 
pleasure  in  relating  it." 

A  N  anonymous  writer  says : — "  The  first  time  I 
heard  Mr.  Thackeray  read  in  public,  he  paid 
a  tribute  to  '  Bo2.'  It  was  the  night  after  the  Ox- 
ford election,  in  which  Mr.  Thackeray  was  an  un- 
successful candidate,  and  the  kind-hearted  author 
hastened  up  to  town  to  fulfil  a  promise  to  give 
some  readings  on  behalf  of  Mr.  Angus  Reach.*  I 
well  remember  the  burst  of  laughter  and  applause 
which  greeted  the  opening  words  of  his  reading. 
'  Walking  yesterday  down  the  streets  of  an  ancient 
and  well-known  city,  I,' — but  here  the  allusion  to 
Oxford  was  recognized,  and  he  had  to  wait  until 


*  The  writer  is  here  in  error.  The  Lecture  was  not  de- 
livered on  behalf  of  Mr.  Reach,  but  for  the  fund  then 
being  raised  to  the  memory  of  the  late  Douglas  Jerrold. 


Anecdotes  cmd  Reminiscen'Ces.  195 

the  merriment  it  created  had  ceased.  In  alluding 
to  Charles  Dickens,  Mr.  Thackeray,  after  speaking 
with  abhorrence  of  the  impurity  of  the  writings  of 
Sterne,  went  on  to  say  : — '  The  foul  satyr's  eyes 
leer  out  of  the  leaves  constantly ;  the  last  words 
the  famous  author  wrote  were  bad  and  wicked — 
the  last  lines  the  poor  stricken  wretch  penned 
were  for  pity  and  pardon.  I  think  of  these  past 
writers,  and  of  one  who  lives  amongst  us  now,  and 
am  grateful  for  the  innocent  laughter  and  the 
sweet  and  unsullied  pages  which  the  author  of 
*  David  Copperfield '  gives  to  my  children.'  The 
author  of  '  David  Copperfield '  was  taken  by  sur- 
prise, and  looked  immensely  hard  at  the  ceiling, 
as  if  trying  to  persuade  himself  that  he  was  un- 
known to  the  audience.  On  the  same  night  I 
heard  Thackeray  read  Hood's  celebrated  lines, 
'  One  more  unfortunate,'  &c." 

rpHE  same  \friter  observes : — "  Thackeray  was  a 
member  of  the  Reform,  the  Athenoeum,  and 
the  Garrick  Clubs — perhaps  of  others,  but  it  was 
in  those  I  have  named  that  his  leisure  was  usu- 
ally spent.  The  afternoons  of  the  last  week  of  his 


196  TJiackeray  ;  the  Humourist. 

life  were  almost  entirely  passed  at  the  Reform 
Club,  and  never  had  he  been  more  genial  or  in 
such  apparently  happy  moods.  Many  men  sitting 
in  the  libraries  and  the  dining  rooms  of  these 
Clubs,  have  thought  this  week  of  one  of  the  ten- 
derest  passages  in  his  early  sketches — '  Brown 
the  younger  at  a  Club,' — in  which  the  old  uncle 
is  represented  as  telling  his  nephew,  while  show- 
ing him  the  various  rooms  of  the  club,  of  those 
who  had  dropped  off — whose  names  had  appeared 
at  the  end  of  the  Club  list,  under  the  dismal 
category  of  *  members  deceased,'  in  which  (added 
Thackeray)  '  You  and  I  shall  rank  some  day.' ' 

"ITU.  H  ANN  AY  says  "his  frankness  and  1>on- 
hommie  made  him  delightful  in  a  tete-Ortete, 
and  gave  a  pleasant  human  flavour  to  talk  full  of 
sense,  and  wisdom,  and  experience,  and  lighted  up 
by  the  gaiety  of  the  true  London  man  of  the  world. 
Though  he  said  witty  things,  novf  and  then,  he 
was  not  a  wit  in  the  sense  in  which  Jerrold  was, 
and  he  complained,  sometimes,  that  his  best 
things  occurred  to  him  after  the  occasion  had' 
gone  by !  He  shone  most — as  in  his  books — 


Anecdotes  and  Reminiscences.  197 

in  little  subtle  remarks  on  life,  and  little  descrip- 
tive sketches  suggested  by  the  talk.  We  re- 
member, in  particular,  one  evening,  after  a  din- 
ner-party at  his  house,  a  fancy  picture  he  drew 
of  Shakspeare  during  his  last  years  at  Stratford, 
sitting  out  in  the  summer  afternoon  watching  the 
people,  which  all  who  heard  it,  brief  as  it  was, 
thought  equal  to  the  best  things  in  his  Lectures. 
But  it  was  not  for  this  sort  of  talent, — rarely 
exerted  by  him, — that  people  admired  his  con- 
versation. They  admired,  above  all,  the  broad 
sagacity,  sharp  insight,  large  and  tolerant  libe- 
rality, which  marked  him  as  one  who  was  a  sage 
as  well  as  a  story-teller,  and  whose  stories  were 
valuable  because  he  was  a  sage.  Another 
point  of  likeness  to  him  in  Scott  was  that 
he  never  over-valued  story-telling,  or  forgot  that 
there  were  nobler  things  in  literature  than  the 
purest  creation  of  which  the  object  was  amuse- 
ment." * 

*  Mr.  Hannay's  interesting  sketch,  originally  published 
in  the  form  of  an  article  in  the  Edinburgh  Courant,  has 
since  been  reprinted  in  a  pamphlet  form  by  Messrs.  Oliver 
and  Boyd,  of  Edinburgh. 


198  Thackeray  /  the  Humoui'ist. 


and  FIELDING.—  Thacke- 
ray, many  years  since,  came  down  into  Somer- 
setshire to  visit  some  friends  in  the  bright  and  sun- 
ny days  of  Sydney  Smith,  and  rejoiced  in  the  so- 
ciety and  cordial  hospitality  of  the  witty  Rector  of 
Combe  Florey.  Unfortunately,  there  is  no  Boswell 
to  record  the  good  things  uttered  by  these  noble 
humourists.  Thackeray,  at  a  later  period  of  his 
life,  contemplated  a  pilgrimage  to  Sharpham  Park, 
near  Glastonbury,  the  birth-place  of  Fielding, 
whose  character  he  has  drawn  with  such  genuine 
sympathy  and  discernment  in  his  "  Lectures  on 
the  English  Humourists."  He  was  gratified  to 
learn  from  a  gentleman  living  in  that  part  of  the 
country,  Mr.  Kinglake,  that  a  place  in  the  Gallery 
of  "  West  Country  "  Worthies,  with  the  glorious 
company  of  Blake  and  Locke,  was  reserved  for 
the  author  of  "  Tom  Jones."  The  inscription 
for  the  Fielding  Memorial  would  have  been  the 
work  of  Mr.  Thackeray's  hand  if  his  life  had  been 
spared  a  few  months  longer.  He  was  fond  of 
repeating  Gibbons'  panegyric  on  Fielding.  It  is 
as  follows  :  —  "  Our  immortal  Fielding  was  of  the 
younger  branch  of  the  Earls  of  Denbigh,  who 


Anecdotes  and  JKemmiscences.         '  199 

drew  their  origin  from  the  Counts  of  Hapsburg. 
The  successors  of  Charles  Y.  may  disdain  their 
brethren  of  England,  but  the  romance  of  l  Tom 
Jones,'  that  exquisite  picture  of  human  manners, 
will  outlive  the  Palace  of  the  Escurial,  and  the 
Imperial  Eagle  of  Austria." 

TN"  October,  1855,  a  dinner  was  given  to  Mr. 
!**  Thackeray  at  the  London  Tavern,  of  which 
one  who  was  present  gave  at  the  time  the  follow- 
ing account : — "  The  Thackeray  dinner  was  a 
triumph.  Covers,  we  are  assured,  were  laid  for 
sixty ;  and  sixty  and  no  more  sat  down  precisely 
at  the  minute  named  to  do  honor  to  the  great 
novelist.  Sixty  very  hearty  shakes  of  the  hand 
did  Thackeray  receive  from  sixty  friends  on  that 
occasion ;  and  hearty  cheers  from  sixty  vociferous 
and  friendly  tongues  followed  the  chairman's,  Mr. 
Charles  Dickens,  proposal  of  his  health,  and  of 
wishes  for  his  speedy  and  successful  return  among 
us.  Dickens — the  best  after-dinner  speaker  now 
alive — was  never  happier.  He  spoke  as  if  he  was 
fully  conscious  that  it  was  a  great  occasion,  and 
that  the  absence  of  even  one  reporter  was  a  matter 


200  Thackeray  /  the  Humourist. 

of  congratulation,  affording  ampler  room  to  un- 
bend. The  table  was  in  the  shape  of  a  horse- 
shoe, having  two  vice-chairmen  ;  and  this  circum- 
stance was  wrought  up  and  played  with  by  Dick- 
ens in  the  true  Sam  Weller  and  Charles  Dickens 
manner.  Thackeray,  who  is  far  from  what  is 
called  a  good  speaker,  outdid  himself.  There 
was  his  usual  hesitation ;  but  this  hesitation  be- 
comes his  manner  of  speaking  and  his  matter,  and 
is  never  unpleasant  to  his  hearers,  though  it  is, 
we  are  assured,  most  irksome  to  himself.  This 
speech  was  full  of  pathos,  and  humour,  and  odd- 
ity, with  bits  of  prepared  parts  imperfectly  recol- 
lected, but  most  happily  made  good  by  the  felici- 
ties of  the  passing  moment.  Like  the  '  Last  Min- 
strel,' 

'  Each  blank  in  faithless  memory  void 
The  poet's  glowing  thought  supplied.' 

It  was  a  speech  to  remember  for  its  earnestness 
of  purpose  and  its  undoubted  originality.  Then 
the  chairman  quitted,  and  many  near  and  at 
a  distance,  quitted  with  him.  Thackeray  was 
on  the  move  with  the  chairman,  when,  inspired 
by  the  moment,  Jerrold  took  the  chair,  and 


Anecdotes  and  Reminiscences.  201 

Thackeray  remained.  Who  is  to  chronicle  what 
now  passed  ? — what  passages  of  wit — what  neat 
and  pleasant  sarcastic  speeches  in  proposing 
healths — what  varied  and  pleasant,  ay,  and  at 
times,  sarcastic  acknowledgments  ?  Up  to  the 
time  when  Dickens  left,  a  good  reporter  might 
have  given  all,  and  with  ease,  to  future  ages  :  but 
there  could  be  no  reporting  what  followed.  There 
were  words  too  nimble  and  too  full  of  flame  for  a 
dozen  Gurneys,  all  ears,  to  catch  and  preserve. 
Few,  will  forget  that  night.  There  was  an  '  air 
of  wit'  about  the  room  for  three  days  after. 
Enough  to  make  the  two  next  companies,  though 
downright  fools,  right  witty." 

ME.  SHIRLEY  BROOKS  has  given  an  inter- 
esting account  of  the  last  occasion  on  which 
he  saw  Mr.  Thackeray.  It  was  at  the  Garrick 
Club,  on  Wednesday  the  16th  of  December. 
Mr.  Thackeray,  who  was  dining,  was,  he  tells  us, 
in  his  usual  spirits,  which  were  never  boisterous 
and  always  cheerful,  and  he  had  pleasant  words 
for  all  present.  "  On  that  evening,"  adds  Mr. 
Brooks,  "  he  enjoyed  himself  much,  in  his  own 


202  Thackeray  /  the  Humourist. 

quiet  way,  and  contributed  genially  to  the  enjoy- 
ment of  those  who  were  something  less  quiet ; 
and,  a  question  arising  about  a  subscription  in.  aid 
of  a  disabled  artist,  he  instantly  offered  to  increase, 
if  necessary,  a  sum  he  had  previously  promised. 
The  writer's  very  last  recollection  of  the  '  cynic,' 
therefore,  is  in  connexion  with  an  unasked  act  of 
Christian  kindness.  On  the  following  Monday 
he  attended  the  funeral  of  a  lady  who  was  inter- 
red in  Kensal  Green  Cemetery.  On  the  Tuesday 
evening  he  came  to  his  favourite  club — the  Gar- 
rick — and  asked  a  seat  at  the  table  of  two  friends, 
who,  of  course,  welcomed  him  as  all  welcomed 
Thackeray.  It  will  not  be  deemed  too  minute  a 
record  by  any  of  the  hundreds  who  personally 
loved  him  to  note  where  he  sat  for  the  last  time 
in  that  club.  There  is  in  the  dining-room  on  the 
first  floor  a  nook  near  the  reading  room.  The 
principal  picture  hanging  in  that  nook,  and  front- 
ing you  as  you  approach  it,  is  the  celebrated  one 
from '  The  Clandestine  Marriage,'  with  Lord  Ogle- 
by,  Canton,  and  Brush.  Opposite  to  that  Thack- 
eray took  his  seat  and  dined  with  his  friends. 
He  was  afterwards  in  the  smoking  room,  a 


Anecdotes  <md  Reminiscences.  203 

place  in  which  he  delighted.  The  Garrick  Club 
will  remove  in  a  few  months,  and  all  these  de- 
tails will  be  nothing  to  its  new  members,  but 
much  to  many  of  its  old  ones.  His  place  there 
will  know  him  and  them  no  more.  On  the 
Wednesday  he  was  out  several  times,  and  was 
seen  in  Palace  Gardens  '  reading  a  book.'  Before 
the  dawn  on  Thursday,  he  was  where  there  is  no 
night." 

To  the  information  concerning  Mr.  Thack- 
eray's family  which  we  have  already  given,  we 
may  add  the  following  particulars.  Dr.  George 
Thackeray,  an  uncle,  we  believe,  of  the  deceased 
author,  was  provost  of  King's  from  1814  till  his 
death  in  1850,  the  very  dignity  which,  as  our 
readers  will  remember,  the  good  Dr.  Thomas 
Thackeray,  the  novelist's  great  grandfather,  had 
unsuccessfully  competed  for.  Another  connexion, 
the  Rev.  Mr.  Thackeray,  was  instituted  by  King's 
College  to  a  living  in  Norfolk  in  1846,  and 
another  to  a  living  in  Lincolnshire  in  1840.  Six 
members  of  the  family  took  their  degrees  at  Cam- 
bridge from  different  colleges  in  the  interval  be- 
tween 1800  and  1823,  and  eight  more  Thack- 


204  Thackeray  y  the  Humourist. 

erays  stand  in  the  list  of  Cambridge  graduates 
between  1685  and  the  end  of  the  last  century. 
A  cousin  of  the  deceased,  a  first-class  man,  and 
late  fellow  of  Lincoln  College,  Oxford,  is  now  one 
of  the  assistant-masters  at  Eton ;  and  another 
cousin,  Lieutenant  Edward  Talbot  Thackeray,  of 
the  Bengal  Engineers,  obtained,  in  1862,  the  Yic- 
toria  Cross  in  reward  for  his  cool  intrepidity  and 
daring  in  extinguishing  a  fire  in  the  Delhi  maga- 
zine inclosure  on  the  16th  September,  1857,  under 
a  heavy  fire  from  the  enemy,  at  the  imminent 
risk  of  his  life  from  an  explosion. 

To  his  intimate  friends,  it  must  be  pleasing  to 
see  how  much  progress  has  been  made,  even  in 
the  brief  period  which  has  elapsed  since  his  death, 
towards  a  right  appreciation  of  his  character.  The 
notion  that  the  man,  who  with  such  delicate  irony 
and  unsparing  satire  laid  bare  the  folly  and  wick- 
edness of  "  Vanity  Fair,"  must  necessarily  be 
harsh  and  misanthropical,  is  already  forgotten. 
Men  remember  now  the  many  eloquent  and  ten- 
der passages  in  which  he  touches  upon  human 
frailty,  or  depicts  the  brighter  side  of  life,  the 
many  noble  appeals  which  he  has  made  in  favour 


Anecdotes  and  Reminiscences.  205 

of  charity  and  forbearance.  Nor  is  this  entirely 
due  to  our  natural  tenderness  towards  those  who 
have  just  passed  through  that  dark  and  narrow 
gateway  whither  all  human  footsteps  tend.  For 
some  time  past,  these  truer  ideas  of  his  private 
character  have  been  gaining  ground.  It  is  said 
that  of  late,  and  since  the  one  great  over-shadow- 
ing affliction  of  his  domestic  Me  had  been  softened 
down,  nothing  had  caused  him  so  much  pain  as  his 
sense  that  his  satirical  writings  had  led  many  to 
regard  him  as  a  heartless  cynic.  It  was  natural 
that  he  should  strive  to  remove  this  impression ; 
but  the  proofs  of  his  good-heartedness  are  too  nu- 
merous, and  many  of  too  old  a  date,  as  in  his  kind- 
ness to  Maginn,  to  Louis  Marvy  and  others,  to  be 
attributed  to  this  cause.  One  of  the  newspaper 
reporters,  in  describing  the  funeral,  touchingly  re- 
marks that  some  persons  took  a  farewell  sorrowful 
look  into  his  grave,  who  were  not  recognized  there* 
among  the  great  assemblage  of  literary  and  artis- 
tic celebrities,  and  whose  bond  of  sympathy  or 
ground  of  gratitude  towards  the  deceased  were 
known  only  to  themselves.  To  those  who  knew 
best  his  private  life  this  will  be  most  intelligible. 
Time  will  assuredly  do  justice  to  his  memory. 


206  Thackeray  y  the  Humourist. 


MR.  THACKERAY'S  PUBLIC  SPEECHES: 

A  Selection  from  Notes  taken  on  various 
occasions. 


THE  peculiar  humour  of  Mr.  Thackeray  is  no- 
where more  readily  discernible  than  in  his 
speeches.  These  were  always  unstudied,  as  the 
occasions  when  they  were  uttered  allowed  that 
freedom  of  fancy,  and  play  of  sudden  thought,  of 
which  the  pen  is  not  always  willing  to  make  use. 
As  such  it  is  believed  that  these  specimens  of  his 
public  speaking,  hitherto  uncollected,  will  be  wel- 
come to  his  admirers. 

LITERATURE  V6T8U8  POLITICS. 

1848. 

"  If  the  approbation  which  my  profession  re- 
ceives is  such  as  Mr.  Adolphus  is  pleased  to  say  it 
has  been  [he  had  just  been  speaking  of  the  very 
high  importance  of  this  branch  of  literature,  and 
of  Mr.  Thackeray  as  one  of  its  most  distinguished 
ornaments],  I  can  only  say  that  we  are  nearly  as 
happy  in  this  country  as  our  brother  literary  men 
are  in  foreign  countries ;  and  that  we  have  all  but 
arrived  at  the  state  of  dethroning  you  all.  I  don't 
wish  that  this  catastrophe  should  be  brought  about 
for  the  sake  of  personal  quiet ;  for  one,  I  am  desi- 
rous to  read  my  books,  write  my  articles,  and  get 


His  Public  Speeches.  207 


my  money.  I  don't  wish  that  that  should  take 
place  ;  but  if  I  survey  mankind,  not '  from  China 
to  Peru,'  but  over  the  map  of  Europe,  with  that 
cursory  glance  which  novel-writers  can  afford  to 
take,  I  see  nothing  but  literary  men  who  seem 
to  be  superintending  the  affairs  of  the  Continent, 
and  only  our  happy  island  which  is  exempt  from 
the  literary  despotism.  Look  to  Italy,  towards 
the  boot  of  which  I  turn  my  eyes,  and  first,  I 
find  that  a  great  number  of  novelists  and  literary 
men  are  bouleversing  the  country  from  toe  to 
heel,  turning  about  Naples,  and  kicking  Rome 
here  and  there,  and  causing  a  sudden  onward 
impetus  of  the  monarchy  of  the  great  Carlo  Al- 
berto himself.  If  I  go  to  France,  I  find  that  men, 
and  more  particularly  men  of  my  own  profession 
and  Mr.  James's  profession,  are  governing  the 
country  ;  I  find  that  writers  of  fiction  and  authors 
in  general  are  ruling  over  the  destinies  of  the 
empire ;  that  Pegasus  is,  as  it  were,  the  charger 
of  the  first  citizen  of  the  Republic.  But  arriving 
at  my  own  country.  I  beseech  you  to  remember 
that  there  was  a  time,  a  little  time  ago,  on  the 
'  10th  of  April  last,'  when  a  great  novelist — a 
great  member  of  my  own  profession — was  stand- 
ing upon  Kennington  Common  in  the  van  of 
liberty,  prepared  to  assume  any  responsibility,  to 
take  upon  himself  any  direction  of  government, 
to  decorate  himself  with  the  tricolour  sash,  or  the 
Robespierre  waistcoat ;  and  but  for  the  timely, 


208  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist. 


and  I  may  say  '  special '  interposition  of  many 
who  are  here  present,  you  might  have  been 
at  present  commanded  by  a  president  of  a  literary 
republic,  instead  of  by  our  present  sovereign.  I 
doubt  whether  any  presidents  of  any  literary 
republics  would  contribute  as  much  to  the  funds 
of  this  society.  I  don't  believe  that  the  country 
as  yet  requires  so  much  of  our  literary  men  ;  but 
in  the  meanwhile  I  suppose  it  must  be  the  task 
and  endeavour  of  all  us  light  practitioners  of 
literature  to  do  our  best,  to  say  our  little  say  in 
the  honestest  way  we  can,  to  tell  the  truth  as 
heartily  and  as  simply  as  we  are  able  to  tell  it, 
to  expose  the  humbug,  and  to  support  the  honest 
man." 

THE  REALITY  OF   THE  NOVELIST'S   CREATION. 
1849. 

"  I  suppose,  Mr.  Chairman,  years  ago  when  you 
had  a  duty  to  perform,  you  did  not  think  much 
about,  or  look  to,  what  men  of  genius  and  men 
of  eloquence  in  England  might  say  of  you  ;  but 
you  went  and  you  did  your  best  with  all  your 
power,  and  what  was  the  result  ?  You  determined 
to  do  your  best  on  the  next  occasion.  I  believe 
that  is  the  philosophy  of  what  I  have  been  doing 
in  the  course  of  my  life ;  I  don't  know  whether 
it  has  tended  to  fame  or  to  laughter,  or  to  serious- 
ness ;  but  I  have  tried  to  say  the  truth,  and  as 
far  as  I  know,  I  have  tried  to  describe  what  I 


His  Public  {Speeches.  209 


saw  before  me,  as  well  as  I  best  might,  and  to 
like  my  neighbour  as  well  as  my  neighbour  would 
let  me  like  him.  All  the  rest  of  the  speech  which 
I  had  prepared,  has  fled  into  thin  air ;  the  only 
part  of  it  which  I  remember  was  an  apology  for, 
or  rather,  an  encomium  of,  the  profession  of  us 
novelists,  which,  I  am  bound  to  say,  for  the 
honour  of  our  calling,  ought  to  rank  with  the 
very  greatest  literary  occupations.  Why  should 
historians  take  precedence  of  us  ?  Our  person- 
ages are  as  real  as  theirs.  For  instance,  I  main- 
tain that  our  friends  Parson  Adams  and  Dr. 
Primrose  are  characters  as  authentic  as  Dr. 
Sacheverell,  or  Dr.  "Warburton,  or  any  reverend 
personage  of  their  times.  Gil  Bias  is  quite  as 
real  and  as  good  a  man  as  the  Duke  of  Lerma, 
and,  I  believe,  a  great  deal  more  so.  I  was 
thinking  too,  that  Don  Quixote  was  to  my  mind 
as  real  a  man  as  Don  John  or  the  Duke  of  Alva ; 
and  then  I  was  turning  to  the  history  of  a  gen- 
tleman of  whom  I  am  particularly  fond — a  school- 
fellow of  mine  before  Dr.  RUSSELL'S  time.  I 
was  turning  to  the  life  and  history  of  one  with 
whom  we  are  all  acquainted,  and  that  is  one 
Mr.  Joseph  Addison,  who,  I  remember,  was 
made  Under-Secretary  of  State  at  one  period  of 
his  life,  under  another  celebrated  man,  Sir 
Charles  Hedges,  I  think  it  was,  but  it  is  now  so 
long  ago,  I  am  not  sure ;  but  I  have  no  doubt 
Mr.  Addison  was  much  more  proud  of  his  con- 


Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist. 


nexion  with  Sir  Charles  Hedges,  and  his  place  in 
Downing-street,  and  his  red  box,  and  his  quarter's 
salary,  punctually  and  regularly  paid  ;  I  dare  say 
he  was  much  more  proud  of  these,  than  of  any 
literary  honour  which  he  received,  such  as  being 
the  author  of  the  '  Tour  to  Italy,'  and  the 
'  Campaign.'  But  after  all,  though  he  was  in- 
dubitably connected  with  Sir  Charles  Hedges, 
there  was  another  knight  with  whom  he  was 
much  more  connected,  and  that  was  a  certain  Sir 
Roger  de  Coverley,  whom  we  have  always  loved, 
and  believed  in  a  thousand  times  better  than  a 
thousand  Sir  Charles  Hedges.  And  as  I  look 
round  at  this  my  table,  gentlemen,  I  cannot  but 
perceive  that  the  materials  for  my  favourite 
romances  are  never  likely  to  be  wanting  to  future 
authors.  I  don't  know  that  anything  I  have 
written  has  been  generally  romantic ;  but  if  I 
were  disposed  to  write  a  romance,  I  think  I 
should  like  to  try  an  Indian  tale,  and  I  should 
take  for  the  heroes  of  it,  or  for  some  of  the  heroes 
of  it — I  would  take  the  noble  lord  whom  I  see 
opposite  to  me  [Lord  Napier]  with  the  Sutlej 
flowing  before  him,  and  the  enemy  in  his  front, 
and  himself  riding  before  the  British  army,  with 
his  little  son  Arthur  and  his  son  Charles  by  his 
side.  I  am  sure,  in  all  the  regions  of  romance, 
I  could  find  nothing  more  noble  and  affecting 
than  that  story,  and  I  hope  some  of  these  days, 
some  more  able  novelist  will  undertake  it." 


His  PubUc  Speeches.  211 


AUTHORS  AND  THEIR  PATRONS. 
1851. 

"  Literary  men  are  not  by  any  means,  at  this 
present  time,  that  most  unfortunate  and  most 
degraded  set  of  people  whom  they  are  sometimes 
represented  to  be.  If  foreign  gentlemen  should  by 
any  chance  go  to  see  '  The  Rivals '  represented  at 
one  of  our  theatres,  they  will  see  Captain  Abso- 
lute and  Miss  Lydia  Languish  making  love  to  one 
another,  and  conversing,  if  not  in  the  costume  of 
our  present  day,  or  such  as  gentlemen  and  ladies 
are  accustomed  to  use,  at  any  rate  in  something 
near  it ;  whereas,  when  the  old  father  Sir  Anthony 
Absolute  comes  in,  nothing  will  content  the  stage 
but  that  he  should  appear  with  red  heels,  large 
buckles,  and  an  immense  Ramilies  wig.  This  is 
the  stage  tradition  :  they  won't  believe  in  an  old 
man,  unless  he  appears  in  this  dress,  and  with 
this  wig ;  nor  in  an  old  lady,  unless  she  comes 
forward  in  a  quilted  petticoat  and  high-heeled 
shoes ;  nor  in  Hamlet's  gravedigger,  unless  he 
wears  some  four-and-twenty  waistcoats ;  and  so 
on.  In  my  trade,  in  my  especial  branch  of  lite- 
rature, the  same  tradition  exists ;  and  certain 
persons  are  constantly  apt  to  bring  forward,  or  to 
believe  in  the  existence  at  this  moment,  of  the 
miserable  old  literary  hack  of  the  time  of  George 
the  Second,  and  bring  him  before  us  as  the  lite- 
rary man  of  this  day.  I  say  that  that  disreputable 


212  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist. 


old  phantom  ought  to  be  hissed  out  of  society. 
I  don't  believe  in  the  literary  man  being  obliged 
to  resort  to  ignoble  artifices  and  mean  flatteries, 
to  get  places  at  the  tables  of  the  great,  and  to 
enter  into  society  upon  sufferance.  I  don't  be- 
lieve in  the  patrons  of  this  present  day,  except 
such  patrons  as  I  am  happy  to  have  in  you,  and 
as  any  honest  man  might  be  proud  to  have,  and 
shake  by  the  hand,  and  be  shaken  by  the  hand 
by.  Therefore  I  propose  from  this  day  forward, 
that  the  oppressed  literary  man  should  disappear 
from  among  us.  The  times  are  altered ;  the  people 
don't  exist ;  '  the  patron  and  the  jail,'  praise  God, 
are  vanished  from  out  our  institutions.  It  may 
be  possible  that  the  eminent  Mr.  Edmund  Curl 
stood  in  the  pillory  in  the  time  of  Queen  Anne, 
who,  thank  God,  is  dead  ;  it  may  be,  that  in  the 
reign  of  another  celebrated  monarch  of  these 
realms,  Queen  Elizabeth,  authors  who  abused  the 
persons  of  honours,  would  have  their  arms  cut  off 
on  the  first  offence,  and  be  hanged  on  the  second. 
Gentlemen,  what  would  be  the  position  of  my 
august  friend  and  patron,  Mr.  Punch,  if  that 
were  now  the  case  ?  Where  would  be  his  hands, 
and  his  neck,  and  his  ears,  and  his  bowels  ?  He 
would  be  disembowelled  and  his  members  cast 
about  the  land.  "We  don't  want  patrons,  we  want 
friends  ;  and  I  thank  God,  we  have  them.  And 
as  for  any  idea  that  our  calling  is  despised  by  the 
world,  I  do  for  my  part  protest  against  and  deny 


His  Public  Speeches.  213 


the  whole  statement.  I  have  been  in  all  sorts  of 
society  in  this  world,  and  I  never  have  been  de- 
spised that  I  know  of.  I  don't  believe  there  has 
been  a  literary  man  of  the  slightest  merit,  or  of 
the  slightest  mark,  who  did  not  greatly  advance 
himself  by  his  literary  labours.-  I  see  along  this 
august  table  gentlemen  whom  I  have  had  the 
honour  of  shaking  by  the  hand  and  gentlemen 
whom  I  never  should  have  called  my  friends,  but 
for  the  humble  literary  labours  I  have  been  en- 
gaged in.  And,  therefore,  I  say,  don't  let  us  be 
pitied  any  more.  As  for  pity  being  employed 
upon  authors,  especially  in  my  branch  of  the  pro- 
fession, if  you  will  but  look  at  the  novelists  of  the 
present  day,  I  think  you  will  see  it  is  altogether 
out  of  the  question  to  pity  them.  We  will  take 
in  the  first  place,  if  you  please,  a  great  novelist 
who  is  the  great  head  of  a  great  party  in  a  great 
assembly  in  this  country.  When  this  celebrated 
man  went  into  his  county  to  be  proposed  to  repre- 
sent it,  and  he  was  asked  on  what  interest  he 
stood  ?  he  nobly  said,  '  he  stood  on  his  head.' 
And  who  can  question  the  gallantry  and  brilliancy 
of  that  eminent  crest  of  his,  and  what  man  will 
deny  the  great  merit  of  Mr.  Disraeli  ?  Take  next 
another  novelist,  who  writes  from  his  ancestral 
hall,  and  addresses  John  Bull  in  letters  on  mat- 
ters of  politics,  and  John  Bull  buys  eight  editions 
of  those  letters.  Is  not  this  a  prospect  for  a 
novelist  ?  There  is  a  third,  who  is  employed  upon 


Thackeray  /  the  Humourist. 


this  very  evening,  heart  and  hand,  heart  and  voice, 
I  may  say,  on  a  work  of  charity.  And  what  is  the 
consequence?  The  Queen  of  the  realm,  the 
greatest  nobles  of  the  empire,  all  the  great  of  the 
world,  will  assemble  to  see  him  and  do  him 
honour.  I  say,  therefore,  don't  let  us  have  pity. 
I  don't  want  it  till  I  really  do  want  it.  Of  course 
it  is  impossible  for  us  to  settle  the  mere  prices 
by  which  the  works  of  those  who  amuse  the  public 
are  to  be  paid.  I  am  perfectly  aware  that  Signer 
Twankeydillo,  of  the  Italian  Opera,  and  Made- 
moiselle Petitpas,  of  the  Haymarket,  will  get  a 
great  deal  more  money  in  a  week,  for  the  skilful 
exercise  of  their  chest  and  toes,  than  I,  or  you,  or 
any  gentleman,  shall  be  able  to  get  by  our  brains 
and  by  weeks  of  hard  labour.  We  cannot  help 
these  differences  in  payment,  we  know  there  must 
be  high  and  low  payments  in  our  trade  as  in  all 
trades;  that  there  must  be  gluts  of  the  market, 
and  over  production  ;  that  there  must  be  success- 
ful machinery,  and  rivals,  and  brilliant  importa- 
tions from  foreign  countries ;  that  there  must  be 
hands  out  of  employ,  and  tribulation  of  workmen. 
But  these  ill  winds  which  afflict  us,  blow  fortunes 
to  our  successors.  These  are  natural  evils.  It  is 
the  progress  of  the  world,  rather  than  any  evil 
which  we  can  remedy,  and  that  is  why  I  say  this 
society  acts  most  wisely  and  justly  in  endeavouring 
to  remedy,  not  the  chronic  distress,  but  the  tem- 
porary evil ;  that  it  finds  a  man  at  the  moment  of 


Hia  Public  Speeches.  215 

the  pinch  of  necessity,  helps  him  a  little,  and  gives 
him  a  '  God  speed,'  and  sends  him  on  his  way. 
For  my  own  part  I  have  felt  that  necessity,  and 
bent  under  that  calamity  ;  and  it  is  because  I  have 
found  friends  who  have  nobly,  with  God's  blessing, 
helped  me  at  that  moment  of  distress,  that  I  feel 
deeply  interested  in  the  ends  of  a  Society,*  which 
has  for  its  object  to  help  my  brethren  in  similar 
need." 

THE  NOVELIST'S  FUTURE  LABOURS. 

1852. 

"  We,  from  this  end  of  the  table  [on  occasion 
of  the  Royal  Literary  Fund  dinner],  speak  humbly 
and  from  afar  off.  "We  are  the  usefuls  of  the 
company,  who  over  and  over  again  perform  our 
little  part,  deliver  our  little  messages,  and  then 
sit  down ;  whereas  you,  yonder,  are  the  great  stars 
of  the  evening ; — you  are  collected  with  much 
care,  and  skill,  and  ingenuity,  by  the  manager  of 
this  benefit  performance ;  you  perform  Macbeth 
and  Hamlet,  we  are  the  Rozencrantzes  and  Guil- 
densterns ;  we  are  the  Banquos, — as  I  know  a 
Banquo  who  has  shaken  his  gory  old  wig  at  Drnry 
Lane,  at  a  dozen  Macbeths.  "We  resemble  the 
individual  in  plush,  whom  gentlemen  may  have 
seen  at  the  Opera,  who  comes  forward  and  de- 
murely waters  the  stage,  to  the  applause  of  the 
audience — never  mind  who  is  the  great  Taglioni, 
or  the  Lind,  or  the  Wagner,  who  is  to  receive  all 
*  Royal  Literary  Fund. 


216  Thackeray  /  the  Humourist. 


the  glory.  For  my  part,  I  am  happy  to  fulfil  that 
humble  office,  and  to  make  my  little  spurt,  and 
to  retire,  and  leave  the  place  for  a  greater  and 
more  able  performer.  How  like  British  charity 
is  to  British  valour  !  It  always  must  be  well  fed 
before  it  comes  into  action  !  We  see  before  us  a 
ceremony  of  this  sort,  which  Britons  always  un- 
dergo with  pleasure.  There  is  no  tax  which  the 
Briton  pays  so  cheerfully  as  the  dinner-tax.  Every 
man  here,  I  have  no  doubt,  who  is  a  little  ac- 
quainted with  the  world,  must  have  received,  in 
the  course  of  the  last  month,  a  basketful  of  tickets, 
inviting  him  to  meet  in  this  place,  for  some  pur- 
pose or  other.  We  have  all  rapped  upon  this 
table,  either  admiring  the  speaker  for  his  elo- 
quence, or,  at  any  rate,  applauding  him  when  he 
sits  down.  We  all  of  us  know — we  have  had  it 
a  hundred  times — the  celebrated  flavour  of  the 
old  Freemasons'  mock-turtle,  and  the  celebrated 
Freemasons'  sherry  ;  and  if  I  seem  to  laugh  at  the 
usage,  the  honest,  good  old  English  usage,  of 
eating  and  drinking,  which  brings  us  all  together, 
for  all  sorts  of  good  purposes — do  not  suppose  that 
I  laugh  at  it  any  more  than  I  would  at  good,  old, 
honest  John  Bull,  who  has  under  his  good,  huge, 
boisterous  exterior,  a  great  deal  of  kindness  and 
goodness  at  the  heart  of  him.  Our  festival  may 
be  compared  with  such  a  person ;  men  meet  here 
and  shake  hands,  kind  hearts  grow  kinder  over 
the  table,  and  a  silent  almoner  issues  forth 


His  Public  Speeches.  217 


from  it,  the  festival  over,  and  gratifies  poor 
people,  and  relieves  the  suffering  of  the  poor, 
which  would  never  be  relieved  but  for  your  kind- 
ness. So  that  there  is  a  grace  that  follows  after 
your  meat  and  sanctifies  it.  We  have  heard  the 
historians  and  their  calling  worthily  exalted  just 
now  ;  but  it  seems  to  me  that  my  calling  will  be 
the  very  longest  and  the  last  of  those  of  all 
the  literary  gentlemen  I  see  before  me.  Long 
after  the  present  generation  is  dead — of  readers 
and  of  authors  of  books — there  must  be  kindness 
and  generosity,  and  folly  and  fidelity,  and  love  and 
heroism,  and  humbug  in  the  world  ;  and,  as  long 
as  they  last,  my  successors,  or  the  successors  of 
the  novelists  who  come  long  after  us,  will  have 
plenty  to  do,  and  plenty  of  subjects  to  write  upon. 
There  may  chance  to  be  a  time  when  wars  will  be 
over,  and  the  '  decisive  battles '  of  the  world  will 
not  need  a  historian.  There  may  arrive  a  time 
when  the  Court  of  Chancery  itself  will  be  extin- 
guished ;  and,  as  perhaps  your  Lordship  is  aware, 
there  is  a  certain  author  of  a  certain  work  called 
*  Bleak  House,'  who,  for  the  past  three  months, 
has  been  assaulting  the  Court  of  Chancery  in  a 
manner  that  I  cannot  conceive  that  ancient  insti- 
tution will  survive.  There  may  be  a  time  when 
the  Court  of  Chancery  will  cease  to  exist,  and 
when  the  historian  of  the  'Lives  of  the  Lord 
Chancellors '  will  have  no  calling.  I  have  often 
speculated  upon  what  the  successors  of  the 
10 


218  Thackeray  ;  the  Humowrist. 


Novelists  in  future  ages  may  have  to  do  ;  and  I 
have  fancied  them  occupied  with  the  times  and 
people  of  our  own  age.  If  I  could  fancy  a  man 
so  occupied  hereafter,  and  busied  we  will  say  with 
a  heroic  story,  I  would  take  the  story  which  I 
heard  hinted  at  the  other  night  by  the  honoured, 
the  oldest,  the  bravest  and  greatest  man  in  this 
country — I  would  take  the  great  and  glorious 
action  of  Cape  Danger,  when,  striking  to  the 
powers  above  alone,  the  Birkenhead  went  down  ! 
When,  with  heroic  courage  and  endurance,  the 
men  remained  on  the  decks,  and  the  women  and 
children  were  allowed  to  go  away  safe,  as  the 
people  cheered  them,  and  died  doing  their  duty  ! 
I  know  of  no  victory  so  sublime  in  any  annals  of 
the  feats  of  English  valour — I  know  of  no  story 
that  could  inspire  a  great  author  or  novelist  better 
than  that.  Or,  suppose  we  should  take  the  story 
of  an  individual  of  the  present  day,  whose  name 
has  been  already  mentioned ;  we  might  have  a 
literary  hero,  not  less  literary  than  Mr.  David 
Copperfield,  or  Mr.  Arthur  Pendennis,  who  is 
defunct :  we  might  have  a  literary  hero  who,  at 
twenty  years  of  age,  astonished  the  world  with 
his  brilliant  story  of  '  Yivian  Grey  ; '  who,  in  a 
little  time  afterwards,  and  still  in  the  youthful 
period  of  his  life,  amazed  and  delighted  the  public 
with  '  The  Wondrous  Tale  of  Alroy  ; '  who,  pres- 
ently following  up  the  course  of  his  career,  and 
the  deyelopment  of  his  philosophical  culture,  ex- 


His  Public  Speeches.  219 


plained  to  a  breathless  and  listening  world  the 
great  Caucasian  mystery ;  who,  quitting  literature, 
then  went  into  politics ;  met,  faced,  and  fought, 
and  conquered  the  great  political  giant,  and  great 
orator  of  those  days  ;  who  subsequently  led  thanes 
and  earls  to  battle,  and  caused  reluctant  squires 
to  carry  his  lance  ;  and  who,  but  the  other  day, 
went  in  a  gold  coat  to  kiss  the  hand  of  his  Sove- 
reign, as  Leader  of  the  House  of  Commons  and 
Chancellor  of  Her  Majesty's  Exchequer.  What 
a  hero  that  will  be  for  some  future  novelist,  and 
what  a  magnificent  climax  for  the  third  volume 
of  his  story  !  " 

COMMERCE  AND   LITERATURE. 

1857.* 

"  I  feel  it  needful  for  me  to  be  particularly 
cautious  whenever  I  come  to  any  meeting  in  the 
city  which  has  to  deal  with  money  and  monetary 
affairs.  It  is  seldom  that  I  appear  at  all  in  these 
regions,  unless,  indeed,  it  be  occasionally  to  pay 
a  pleasing  visit  to  Messrs.  Bradbury  and  Evans, 
in  Bouverie  Street,  or  to  Messrs.  Smith  and  Co., 
of  Cornhill.  But  I  read  my  paper  like  every 
good  Briton,  and  from  that  I  gather  a  lesson  of 
profound  caution  in  speaking  to  mercantile  men 
on  subjects  of  this  kind.  Supposing,  for  instance, 
that  I  have  shares  in  the  Bundelcund  Banking 

*  Mr.  Thackeray  was  in  the  chair  at  the  Commercial 
Travellers'  Dinner,  in  1857. 


220  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist. 


Company,  or  in  the  Koyal  British  Diddlcsex 
Bank :  I  come  down  to  a  meeting  of  the  share- 
holders, and  hear  an  honoured  treasurer  and  an 
admirable  president  make  the  most  flourishing 
reports  of  the  state  of  our  concern,  showing  to 
us  enormous  dividends  accompanied  with  the 
most  elegant  bonuses ;  and  proving  to  us  that 
our  funds  are  invested  in  the  most  secure  way  at 
Bogleywallak,  Bundelcund,  and  Branksea  Castle. 
I  go  away  delighted  at  the  happy  prospect  before 
my  wife  and  family,  feeling  perfect  confidence 
that  those  innocent  beings  will  be  comfortable 
for  the  rest  of  their  lives.  What,  then,  is  my 
horror  when,  in  one  brief  fortnight  after,  instead 
of  those  enormous  dividends  and  elegant  bonuses, 
I  am  served  with  a  notice  to  pay  up  a  most  pro- 
digious sum ;  when  I  find  that  our  estates  at 
Bundelcund  and  Bogleywallak  have  been  ravaged 
by  the  Bengal  tiger  ;  that  the  island  of  Branksea 
is  under  water ;  that  our  respected  president  is 
obliged  to  go  to  Spain  for  the  benefit  of  his 
health,  and  our  eloquent  treasurer  cannot  abide 
the  London  fog.  You  see  I  must  be  a  little 
careful.  But,  granted  that  the  accounts  we 
have  here  have  not,  like  our  dinner,  been  sub- 
jected to  an  ingenious  culinary  process  ;  granted 
that  you  have  spent,  as  I  read  in  your  report, 
25,000?.  in  raising  a  noble  school  and  grounds ; 
that  you  have  collected  around  you  the  happy 
juvenile  faces  which  I  see  smiling  on  yonder 


His  Public  Speeches.  221 


benches,  to  be  the  objects  of  your  Christian  kind- 
ness ;  granting  all  this  to  be  true,  then,  gentle- 
men, I  am  your  most  humble  servant,  and  no 
words  that  I  can  find  can  express  my  enthusiastic 
admiration  for  what  you  have  done.  I  sincerely 
wish,  on  behalf  of  my  own  class,  the  literary  pro- 
fession, that  we  could  boast  of  anything  as  good. 
I  wish  that  we  had  an  institution  to  which  we 
could  confide  our  children,  instead  of  having  to 
send  them  about  to  schools  as  we  do,  at  an  awful 
cost.  When  the  respected  Mr.  Squeers  of  Do- 
the-boys  Hall,  announces  that  he  proposes  to  take 
a  limited  number  of  pupils — I  should  rather  say 
a  number  of  very  limited  pupils — it  is  not  because 
he  is  in  love  with  the  little  darlings  that  he  does 
it,  but  because  he  designs  to  extract  a  profit  out 
of  them.  It  always  pains  me  to  think  of  the 
profits  to  be  screwed  out  of  the  bellies  of  the  poor 
little  innocents.  Why  have  we  not,  as  men 
of  letters,  some  such  association  as  that  which  you 
have  got  up  ?  I  appeal  to  my  literary  brethren, 
if  any  of  them  are  present,  whether  we,  the  men 
of  the  line,  cannot  emulate  the  men  of  the  road? 
A  week  ago,  a  friend  engaged  in  my  own  profes- 
sion, making  his  1,OOOZ.  a  year,  showed  me  his 
half-yearly  account  of  his  two  little  boys  at 
school.  These  little  heroes  of  six  and  seven, 
who  are  at  a  very  excellent  school,  where 
they  are  well  provided  for,  came  home  with 
a  little  bill  in  their  pocket  which  amounted  to 


Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist. 


the  sum  of  151.  for  the  half  year.  Now  think 
of  this  poor  Paterfamilias  earning  his  mo- 
derate 1,000?.  a  year,  out  of  which  he  has  his 
life  assurance,  his  income-tax,  and  his  house- 
rent  to  pay,  with  three  or  four  poor  relations 
to  support — for  doubtless  we  are  all  blessed  with 
those  appendages — with  the  heavy  bills  of  his  wife 
and  daughters  for  millinery  and  mantua-making, 
to  meet,  especially  at  their  present  enormous  rates 
and  sizes.  Think  of  this  over-burdened  man 
having  to  pay  75£.  for  one  half-year's  schooling 
of  his  little  boys !  Let  the  gentlemen  of  the  press, 
then,  try  to  devise  some  scheme  which  shall 
benefit  them,  as  you  have  undoubtedly  benefited 
by  what  you  have  accomplished  for  yourselves. 
We  are  all  travellers  and  voyagers  who  must  em- 
bark on  life's  ocean  ;  and  before  you  send  your 
boys  to  sea  you  teach  them  to  swim,  to  navigate 
the  ship,  and  guide  her  into  port.  The  last  time 
I  visited  America,  two  years  ago,  I  sailed  on 
board  the  Africa,  Captain  Harrison.  As  she  was 
steaming  out  of  Liverpool  one  fine  blowy  October 
day,  and  was  hardly  over  the  bar,  when,  animated 
by  those  peculiar  sensations  not  uncommon  to 
landsmen  at  the  commencement  of  a  sea  voyage, 
I  was  holding  on  amidships  (a  laugh),  up  comes 
a  quick-eyed  shrewd-looking  little  man,  who  holds 
on  to  the  next  rope  to  me,  and  says,  "  Mr. 
Thackeray,  I  am  the  representative  of  the  house 
of  Appleton  and  Co.,  of  Broadway,  New  York — a 


His  Public  /Speeches.  223 


most  liberal  and  enterprising  publishing  firm,  who 
will  be  most  happy  to  do  business  with  you."  I 
don't  know  that  we  then  did  any  business  in  the 
line  thus  delicately  hinted  at,  because  at  that  par- 
ticular juncture  we  were  both  of  us  called,  by  a 
heavy  lurch  of  the  ship,  to  a  casting-up  of  ac- 
counts of  a  far  less  agreeable  character." 


224  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist 


IN    MEMOKIAM. 
BY  CHARLES   DICKERS. 

IT  has  been  desired  by  some  of  the  personal 
friends  of  the  great  English  writer  who  estab- 
lished this  magazine,  that  its  brief  record  of  his 
having  been  stricken  from  among  men  should  be 
written  by  the  old  comrade  and  brother  in  arms 
who  pens  these  lines,  and  of  whom  he  often  wrote 
himself,  and  always  with  the  warmest  generosity. 
I  saw  him  first,  nearly  twenty-eight  years 
ago,  when  he  proposed  to  become  the  illustrator 
of  my  earliest  book.  I  saw  him  last,  shortly  be- 
fore Christmas,  at  the  Athenaeum  Club,  when  he 
told  me  that  he  had  been  in  bed  three  days — that, 
after  these  attacks,  he  was  troubled  with  cold 
shiverings,  "  which  quite  took  the  power  of  work 
out  of  him  " — and  that  he  had  it  in  his  mind  to 
try  a  new  remedy  which  he  laughingly  described. 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  225 

He  was  very  cheerful  and  looked  very  bright. 
In  the  night  of  that  day  week,  he  died. 

The  long  interval  between  those  two  periods 
is  marked  in  my  remembrance  of  him  by  many 
occasions  when  he  was  supremely  humorous, 
when  he  was  irresistibly  extravagant,  when  he 
was  softened  and  serious,  when  he  was  charming 
with  children.  But,  by  none  do  I  recall  him 
more  tenderly  than  by  two  or  three  that  start 
out  of  the  crowd,  when  he  unexpectedly  pre- 
sented himself  in  my  room,  announcing  how  that 
some  passage  in  a  certain  book  had  made  him 
cry  yesterday,  and  how  that  he  had  come  to  din- 
ner, "  because  he  couldn't  help  it,"  and  must  talk 
such  passage  over.  No  one  can  ever  have  seen 
him  more  genial,  natural,  cordial,  fresh,  and  hon- 
estly impulsive,  than  I  have  seen  him  at  these 
times.  No  one  can  be  surer  than  I,  of  the  great- 
ness and  the  goodness  of  the  heart  that  then  dis- 
closed itself. 

We  had  our  differences  of  opinion.    I  thought 

that  he  too  much  feigned  a  want  of  earnestness, 

and  that  he  made  a  pretence  of  undervaluing  his 

art,  which  was  not  good  for  the  art  that  he  held 

11* 


226  Thackeray  /  the  Humourist 

in  trust.  But,  when  we  fell  upon  these  topics,  it 
was  never  very  gravely,  and  I  have  a  lively  im- 
age of  him  in  my  mind,  twisting  both  his  hands 
in  his  hair,  and  stamping  about,  laughing,  to 
make  an  end  of  the  discussion. 

When  we  were  associated  in  remembrance  of 
the  late  Mr.  Douglas  Jerrold,  he  delivered  a  pub- 
lic lecture  in  London,  in  the  course  of  which,  he 
read  his  very  best  contribution  to  PUNCH,  de- 
scribing the  grown-up  cares  of  a  poor  family  of 
young  children.  No  one  hearing  him  could  have 
doubted  his  natural  gentleness,  or  his  thoroughly 
unaffected  manly  sympathy  with  the  weak  and 
lowly.  He  read  the  paper  most  pathetically,  and 
with  a  simplicity  of  tenderness  that  certainly 
moved  one  of  his  audience  to  tears.  This  was 
presently  after  his  standing  for  Oxford,  from 
which  place  he  had  dispatched  his  agent  to  me, 
with  a  droll  note  (to  which  he  afterwards  added 
a  verbal  postscript),  urging  me  to  "  come  down 
and  make  a  speech,  and  tell  them  who  he  was, 
for  he  doubted  whether  more  than  two  of  the 
electors  had  ever  heard  of  him,  and  he  thought 
there  might  be  as  many  as  six  or  eight  who  had 


mid  the  Man  of  Letters.  227 

heard  of  me."  He  introduced  the  lecture  just 
mentioned,  with  a  reference  to  his  late  election- 
eering failure,  which  was  full  of  good  sense,  good 
spirits,  and  good  humour. 

He  had  a  particular  delight  in  boys,  and  an 
excellent  way  with  them.  I  remember  his  once 
asking  me  with  fantastic  gravity,  when  he  had 
been  to  Eton  where  my  eldest  son  then  was, 
whether  I  felt  as  he  did  in  regard  of  never  seeing 
a  boy  without  wanting  instantly  to  give  him  a 
sovereign  ?  I  thought  of  this  when  I  looked  down 
into  his  grave,  after  he  was  laid  there,  for  I  looked 
down  into  it  over  the  shoulder  of  a  boy  to  whom 
he  had  been  kind. 

These  are  slight  remembrances ;  but  it  is  to 
little  familiar  things  suggestive  of  the  voice,  look, 
manner,  never,  never  more  to  be  encountered  on 
this  earth,  that  the  mind  first  turns  in  a  bereave- 
ment. And  greater  things  that  are  known  of 
him,  in  the  way  of  his  warm  affections,  his  quiet 
endurance,  his  unselfish  thoughtfulness  for  others, 
and  his  munificent  hand,  may  not  be  told. 

If,  in  the  reckless  vivacity  of  his  youth,  his 
satirical  pen  had  ever  gone  astray  or  done  amiss, 


228  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist. 

he  had  caused  it  to  prefer  its  own  petition  for  for- 
giveness, long  before : 

I've  writ  the  foolish  fancy  of  his  brain ; 

The  aimless  jest  that,  striking,  hath  caused  pain ; 

The  idle  word  that  he'd  wish  back  again. 

In  no  pages  should  I  take  it  upon  myself  at 
this  time  to  discourse  of  his  books,  of  his  refined 
knowledge  of  character,  of  his  subtle  acquaintance 
with  the  weaknesses  of  human  nature,  of  his  de- 
lightful playfulness  as  an  essayist,  of  his  quaint 
and  touching  ballads,  of  his  mastery  over  the  Eng- 
lish language.  Least  of  all,  in  these  pages,  en- 
riched by  his  brilliant  qualities  from  the  first  of 
the  series,  and  beforehand  accepted  by  the  Public 
through  the  strength  of  his  great  name. 

But,  on  the  table  before  me,  there  lies  all 
that  he  had  written  of  his  latest  and  last  story. 
That  it  would  be  very  sad  to  any  one — that  it  is 
inexpressibly  so  to  a  writer — in  its  evidences  of 
matured  designs  never  to  be  accomplished,  of  in- 
tentions begun  to  be  executed  and  destined  never 
to  be  completed,  of  careful  preparation  for  long 
roads  of  thought  that  he  was  never  to  traverse, 
and  for  shining  goals  that  he  was  never  to  reach, 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  229 

will  be  readily  believed.  The  pain,  however, 
that  I  have  felt  in  penising  it,  has  not  been 
deeper  than  the  conviction  that  he  was  in  the 
healthiest  vigour  of  his  powers  when  he  wrought 
on  this  last  labour.  In  respect  of  earnest  feeling, 
far-seeing  purpose,  character,  incident,  and  a  cer- 
tain loving  picturesqueness  blending  the  whole,  I 
believe  it  to  be  much  the  best  of  all  his  works. 
That  he  fully  meant  it  to  be  so,  that  he  had  be- 
come strongly  attached  to  it,  and  that  he  bestowed 
great  pains  upon  it,  I  trace  in  almost  every  page. 
It  contains  one  picture  which  must  have  caused 
him  extreme  distress,  and  which  is  a  masterpiece. 
There  are  two  children  in  it,  touched  with  a  hand 
as  loving  and  tender  as  ever  a  father  caressed  his 
little  child  with.  There  is  some  young  love,  as 
pure  and  innocent  and  pretty  as  the  truth.  And 
it  is  very  remarkable  that,  by  reason  of  the  singu- 
lar construction  of  the  story,  more  than  one  main 
incident  usually  belonging  to  the  end  of  such  a  fic- 
tion is  anticipated  in  the  beginning,  and  thus  there 
is  an  approach  to  completeness  in  the  fragment, 
as  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  reader's  mind  con- 
cerning the  most  interesting  persons,  which  could 


230  Thackeray  /  the  Humourist 

hardly  have  been  better  attained  if  the  writer's 
breaking-oif  had  been  foreseen. 

The  last  line  he  wrote,  and  the  last  proof  he 
corrected,  are  among  these  papers  through  which 
I  have  so  sorrowfully  made  my  way.  The  con- 
dition of  the  little  pages  of  manuscript  where 
Death  stopped  his  hand,  shows  that  he  had  car- 
ried them  about,  and  often  taken  them  out  of  his 
pocket  here  and  there,  for  patient  revision  and  in- 
terlineation. The  last  words  he  corrected  in 
print,  were,  "  And  my  heart  throbbed  with  ex- 
quisite bliss."  GOD  grant  that  on  that  Christmas 
Eve  when  he  laid  his  head  back  on  his  pillow  and 
threw  up  his  arms  as  he  had  been  wont  to  do 
when  very  weary,  some  consciousness  of  duty 
done  and  Christian  hope  throughout  life  humbly 
cherished,  may  have  caused  his  own  heart  so  to 
throb,  when  he  passed  away  to  his  Redeemer's 
rest! 

He  was  found  peacefully  lying  as  above 
described,  composed,  undisturbed,  and  to  all  ap- 
pearance asleep,  on  the  twenty-fourth  of  Decem- 
ber, 1863.  He  was  only  in  his  fifty-third  year  ; 
so  young  a  man,  that  the  mother  who  blessed  him 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  231 

in  his  first  sleep,  blessed  him  in  his  last.  Twenty- 
years  before,  he  had  written,  after  being  in  a 
white  squall : 

And  when,  its  force  expended, 
The  harmless  storm  was  ended, 
And,  as  the  sunrise  splendid 

Came  blushing  o'er  the  sea ; 
I  thought,  as  day  was  breaking, 
My  little  girls  were  waking, 
And  smiling,  and  making 

A  prayer  at  home  for  me. 

Those  little  girls  had  grown  to  be  women  when 
the  mournful  day  broke  that  saw  their  father 
lying  dead.  In  those  twenty  years  of  companion- 
ship with  him,  they  had  learned  much  from  him  ; 
and  one  of  them  has  a  literary  course  before  her, 
worthy  of  her  famous  name. 

On  the  bright  wintry  day,  the  last  but  one  of 
the  old  year,  he  was  laid  in  his  grave  at  Kensal 
Green,  there  to  mingle  the  dust  to  which-  the 
mortal  part  of  him  had  returned,  with  that  of  a 
third  child,  lost  in  her  infancy,  years  ago.  The 
heads  of  a  great  concourse  of  his  fellow-workers 
in  the  Arts,  were  bowed  around  his  tomb. 


232  Thackeray  ;  the  Humourist 


W.  M.  THACKERAY. 
BY    AHTHONY    TKOLLOPE. 


"  Quis  desiderio  sit  pudor  aut  modus  Tarn  cari 
capitis  ? — What  shame  to  wail  with  tears  the  loss 
of  BO  dear  a  head,  or  when  will  there  be  an  end 
to  such  weeping  ? "  Now,  at  the  present  moment, 
it  is  not  so  much  that  he  who  has  left  us  was 
known,  admired,  and  valued,  as  that  he  was 
loved.  The  fine  grey  head,  the  dear  face  with 
its  gentle  smile,  the  sweet,  manly  voice  which  we 
knew  so  well,  with  its  few  words  of  kindest  greet- 
ing ;  the  gait,  the  manner,  and  personal  presence 
of  him  whom  it  so  delighted  us  to  encounter  in 
our  casual  comings  and  goings  about  the  town — 
it  is  of  these  things,  of  these  things  lost  for  ever, 
that  we  are  now  thinking  !  We  think  of  them  as 
of  treasures  which  are  not  only  lost,  but  which 


amd  the  Man  of  Letters.  233 

can  never  be  replaced.  He  who  knew  Thackeray 
will  have  a  vacancy  in  his  heart's  inmost  casket, 
which  must  remain  vacant  till  he  dies.  One 
loved  him  almost  as  one  leves  a  woman,  tenderly 
and  with  thoughtfulness — thinking  of  him  when 
away  from  him  as  a  source  of  joy  which  cannot 
be  analysed,  but  is  full  of  comfort.  One  who 
loved  him,  loved  him  thus  because  his  heart  was 
tender,  as  is  the  heart  of  a  woman. 

It  need  be  told  to  no  one  that  four  years  ago 
— four  years  and  one  month  at  the  day  on  which 
these  words  will  come  before  the  reader — this 
Magazine  was  commenced  under  the  guidance; 
and  in  the  hands,  of  Mr.  Thackeray.  It  is  not 
for  any  of  us  who  were  connected  with  him  in  the 
enterprise  to  say  whether  this  was  done  success- 
fully or  not ;  but  it  is  for  us — for  us  of  all  men — 
to  declare  that  he  was  the  kindest  of  guides,  the 
gentlest  of  rulers,  and,  as  a  fellow-workman,  libe- 
ral, unselfish,  considerate,  beyond  compare.  It 
has  been  said  of  him  that  he  was  jealous  as  a 
writer.  We  of  the  CornhiU  knew  nothing  of  such 
jealousy.  At  the  end  of  two  years  Mr.  Thack- 
eray gave  up  the  management  of  the  Magazine, 


234  Thackeray  /  the  Humourist 

finding  that  there  was  much  in  the  very  nature 
of  the  task  which  embarrassed  and  annoyed  him. 
He  could  not  bear  to  tell  an  ambitious  aspirant 
that  his  aspirations  were  in  vain ;  and  worse 
again,  he  could  not  endure  to  do  so  when  a  lady 
was  his  suppliant.  Their  letters  to  him  were 
thorns  that  festered  in  his  side,  as  he  has  told  us 
himself.  In  truth  it  was  so.  There  are  many 
who  delight  in  wielding  the  editorial  ferule,  good 
men  and  true,  no  doubt,  who  open  their  hearts 
genially  to  genius  when  they  find  it ;  but  they 
can  repress  and  crush  the  incapable  tyro,  or  the 
would-be  poetess  who  has  nothing  to  support  her 
but  her  own  ambition,  if  not  with  delight,  at  least 
with  satisfaction.  Of  such  men  are  good  editors 
made.  "Whether  it  be  a  point  against  a  man,  or 
for  him,  to  be  without  such  power,  they  who 
think  of  the  subject  may  judge  for  themselves. 
Thackeray  had  it  not.  He  lacked  hardness  for 
the  place,  and  therefore,  at  the  end  of  two  years, 
he  relinquished  it. 

But  he  did  not  on  that  account  in  any  way 
sever  himself  from  the  Magazine.  His  Round- 
about Papers,  the  first  of  which  appeared  in  our 


and  tfie  Man  of  Letters.  235 


first  number,  were  carried  on  through  1862,  and 
were  completed  in  the  early  part  of  1863.  Lovel 
the  Widower,  and  his  Lectures  on  the  Four 
Georges,  appeared  under  his  own  editorship. 
Philip  was  so  commenced,  but  was  completed 
after  he  had  ceased  to  reign.  It  was  only  in 
November  last,  as  our  readers  may  remember, 
that  a  paper  appeared  from  his  hand,  entitled, 
Strange  to  say,  on  Club  Paper.  In  this  he  ridi- 
culed a  silly  report  as  to  Lord  Clyde,  which  had 
spread  itself  about  the  town, — doing  so  with  that 
mingled  tenderness  and  sarcasm  for  which  he  was 
noted, — the  tenderness  being  ever  for  those 
named,  and  the  sarcasm  for  those  unknown.  As 
far  as  we  know,  they  were  the  last  words  he  lived 
to  publish.  Speaking  of  the  old  hero  who  has 
just  gone  he  bids  us  remember  that  "  censure  and 
praise  are  alike  to  him  ; — *  The  music  warbling 
to  the  deafened  ear,  The  incense  wasted  on  the 
funeral  bier  ! ' '  How  strange  and  how  sad  that 
these,  his  last  words,  should  now  come  home  to 
us  as  so  fitted  for  himself !  Not  that  we  believe 
that  such  praise  is  wasted, — even  on  the  spirit  of 
him  who  has  gone. 


236  Thackeray  /  the  Humourist 

Comes  the  blind  Fury  with  abhorred,  shears, 

And  slits  the  thin  spun  life  1     "  But  not  the  praise," 

Phoebus  replied,  and  touched  my  trembling  ears. 

Why  should  the  dead  be  inaccessible  to  the  glory 
given  to  them  by  those  who  follow  them  on  the 
earth  ?  He,  of  whom  we  speak,  loved  such  in- 
cense when  living.  If  that  be  an  infirmity  he 
was  so  far  infirm.  But  we  hold  it  to  be  no  in- 
firmity. Who  is  the  man  who  loves  it  not? 
Where  is  the  public  character  to  whom  it  is  not 
as  the  breath  of  his  nostrils  ?  But  there  are  men 
to  whom  it  is  given  to  conceal  their  feelings.  Of 
such  Thackeray  was  not  one.  He  carried  his 
heart-strings  in  a  crystal  case,  and  when  they 
were  wrung  or  when  they  were  soothed  all  their 
workings  were  seen  by  friend  and  foe. 

When  he  died  he  was  still  at  work  for  this 
Magazine.  He  was  writing  yet  another  novel 
for  the  delight  of  its  readers.  "  Shall  we  continue 
this  story -telling  business  and  be  voluble  to  the 
end  of  our  age  ?  Will  it  not  be  presently  time,  O 
prattler,  to  hold  your  tongue  and  let  younger 
people  speak  ?  "  These  words,  of  course,  were  his 
own.  You  will  find  them  in  that  Roundabout 


and  the  Man  of  Letters.  237 

Paper  of  his,  De  Finibus,  which  was  printed  in 
August,  1862.  He  was  voluble  to  the  end; — 
alas,  that  it  should  have  been  the  end !  The 
leisure  time  of  which  he  was  thinking  never  came 
to  him.  That  presently  was  denied  to  him,  nor 
had  he  lived  would  it  have  been  his  for  many  a 
year  to  come.  He  was  young  in  power,  young 
in  heart  as  a  child,  young  even  in  constitution  in 
spite  of  that  malady  which  carried  him  off.  But, 
though  it  was  so,  Thackeray  ever  spoke  of  him- 
self, and  thought  of  himself,  as  of  one  that  was 
old.  He  in  truth  believed  that  the  time  for  let- 
ting others  speak  was  speedily  coming  to  him. 
But  they  who  knew  him  did  not  believe  it,  and 
his  forthcoming  new  novel  was  anxiously  looked 
for  by  many  who  expected  another  Esmond. 

I  may  not  say  how  great  the  loss  will  be  to 
the  Cornhitt,  but  I  think  that  those  concerned  in 
the  matter  will  be  adjudged  to  be  right  in  giving 
to  the  public  so  much  of  this  work  as  he  has  left 
behind  him.  A  portion  of  a  novel  has  not  usually 
much  attraction  for  general  readers  ;  but  we  ven- 
ture to  think  that  this  portion  will  attract.  They 
who  have  studied  Mr.  Thackeray's  characters  in 


238  TJiack&ray  /  the  Humourist 

fiction, — and  it  cannot  be  doubted  that  they  have 
become  matter  of  study  to  many, — will  wish  to 
follow  him  to  the  last,  and  will  trace  with  a  sad 
but  living  interest  the  first  rough  lines  of  the 
closing  portraits  from  his  hand. 

I  shall  not  attempt  here  any  memoir  of  Mr. 
Thackeray's  life.  Such  notices  as  the  passing  day 
requires  have  been  given  in  many  of  the  daily 
and  weekly  papers,  and  have  been  given,  I  be- 
lieve, correctly.  I  may,  perhaps,  specially  notice 
that  from  the  pen  of  Mr.  Hannay,  which  appeared 
in  the  Edinburgh  Oourant.  The  writing  of  his 
life  will  be  a  task,  and  we  trust  a  work  of  love, 
for  which  there  will  probably  be  more  than  one 
candidate.  "We  trust  that  it  may  fall  into  fitting 
hands, — into  the  hands  of  one  who  shall  have 
loved  wisely,  and  not  too  well, — but,  above  all 
things,  into  the  hands  of  a  true  critic.  That  which 
the  world  will  most  want  to  know  of  Thackeray, 
is  the  effect  which  his  writings  have  produced ; 
we  believe  that  effect  to  have  been  very  wide, 
and  beneficial  withal.  Let  us  hope,  also,  that  the 
task  of  his  biography  may  escape  the  untoward 


and  the  Mam,  of  Letters.  239 

hurry  which  has  ruined  the  interest  of  so  many 
of  the  memoirs  of  our  latter-day  worthies. 

Of  our  late  Editor's  works,  the  best  known, 
and  most  widely  appreciated  are,  no  doubt,  Vani- 
ty Fair,  Pendennis,  The  Newcomes,  and  Esmond. 
The  first  on  the  list  has  been  the  most  widely 
popular  with  the  world  at  large.  Pendennis  has 
been  the  best  loved  by  those  who  have  felt  and 
tasted  the  delicacy  of  Thackeray's  tenderness. 
TJie  Newcomes  stands  conspicuously  for  the  char- 
acter of  the  Colonel,  who  as  an  English  gentle- 
man has  no  equal  in  English  fiction.  Esmond, 
of  all  his  works,  has  most  completely  satisfied  the 
critical  tastes  of  those  who  profess  themselves  to 
read  critically.  For  myself,  I  own  that  I  regard 
Esmond  as  the  first  and  finest  novel  in  the  Eng- 
lish language.  Taken  as  a  whole,  I  think  that  it 
is  without  a  peer.  There  is  in  it  a  completeness 
of  historical  plot,  and  an  absence  of  that  taint  of 
unnatural  life  which  blemishes,  perhaps,  all  our 
other  historical  novels,  which  places  it  above  its 
brethren.  And,  beyond  this,  it  is  replete  with  a 
tenderness  which  is  almost  divine, — a  tenderness 
which  no  poetry  has  surpassed.  Let  those  who 


240  Thackeray  /  the  Humourist. 

doubt  this  go  back  and  study  again  the  life  of 
Lady  Castlewood.  In  Esmond,  above  all  his 
works,  Thackeray  achieves  the  great  triumph  of 
touching  the  innermost  core  of  his  subject,  with- 
out ever  wounding  the  taste.  We  catch  all  the 
aroma,  but  the  palpable  body  of  the  thing  never 
stays  with  us  till  it  palls  us.  Who  ever  wrote  of 
love  with  more  delicacy  than  Thackeray  has 
written  in  Esmond.  May  I  quote  one  passage 
of  three  or  four  lines  ?  Who  is  there  that  does 
not  remember  the  meeting  between  Lady  Castle- 
wood  and  Harry  Esmond  after  Esmond's  return. 
"  '  Do  you  know  what  day  it  is  ? '  she  continued. 
1  It  is  the  29th  December ;  it  is  your  birthday  ! 
But  last  year  we  did  not  drink  it ; — no,  no  !  My 
lord  was  cold,  and  my  Harry  was  like  to  die ; 
and  my  brain  was  in  a  fever ;  and  we  had  no 
wine.  But  now, — now  you  are  come  again, 
bringing  your  sheaves  with  you,  my  dear.'  She 
burst  into  a  wild  flood  of  weeping  as  she  spoke  ; 
Bhe  laughed  and  sobbed  on  the  young  man's 
heart,  crying  out  wildly ; — '  bringing  your  sheaves 
with  you, — your  sheaves  with  you  ! ' : 

.But  if  Esmond  be,  as  a  whole,  our  best  Eng- 


and  the  Mem  of  Letters.  241 

lish  novel,  Colonel  Newcome  is  tbe  finest  single 
character  in  English  fiction.  That  it  has  been 
surpassed  by  Cervantes,  in  Don  Quixote^  we  may, 
perhaps,  allow,  though  Don  Quixote  has  the  ad- 
vantage of  that  hundred  years  which  is  necessary 
to  the  perfect  mellowing  of  any  great  work. 
When  Colonel  Kewcome  shall  have  lived  his 
hundred  years,  and  the  lesser  works  of  Thackeray 
and  his  compeers  shall  have  died  away,  then,  and 
not  till  then,  will  the  proper  rank  of  this  creation 
in  literature  be  appreciated. 

We  saw  him  laid  low  in  his  simple  grave  at 
the  close  of  last  year,  and  we  saw  the  brethren  of 
his  art,  one  after  another,  stand  up  on  the  stone 
at  the  grave  foot  to  take  a  last  look  upon  the 
coffin  which  held  him.  It  was  very  sad.  There 
were  the  faces  of  rough  men  red  with  tears,  who 
are  not  used  to  the  melting  mood.  The  grave  was 
very  simple,  as  became  the  sadness  of  the  mo- 
ment. At  such  times  it  is  better  that  the  very 
act  of  interment  should  be  without  pomp  or  sign 
of  glory.  But  as  weeks  pass  by  us,  they,  who 
love  English  literature,  will  desire  to  see  some 
preparation  for  placing  a  memento  of  him  in  that 
11 


242  Thackeray  ;  the  Hume/wrist. 

shrine  in  which  we  keep  the  monuments  of  our 
great  men.  It  is  to  be  regarded  as  a  thing  of 
course,  that  there  should  be  a  bust  of  Thackeray 
in  "Westminster  Abbey. 


THE  E3TD. 


UCSB  LIBRARY 

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